‘ISRO-NASA’s NISAR Mission will help assess climate change impact on Earth’

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) project, a collaboration between India and USA aerospace agencies, is of vital importance as the data collected from the mission will help us better understand the impact of climate change on Earth and create awareness, said Swati Mohan, an Indian-American aerospace engineer associated with NASA.

The NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Mission in 2024 will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise and groundwater, besides supporting a host of other applications.

Dr Mohan, who is currently the Mars 2020 guidance, navigation and controls operations lead at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory, was hosted by the US Consulate Kolkata on Thursday. Asked how the NISAR Mission will help us with climate change raising concerns globally, she said: “NISAR project will collect data to measure different natural disasters. It is of vital importance in regards to tackling climate change. More we know about how our planet is changing, the better will be the measures that we need to take. Accurate data will help us make precise calculations. Additionally, it will help us spread awareness on the impact of climate change on Earth. Without that data we can’t hope to fix the prevailing issues.”

Highlighting upcoming significant space missions, Dr Mohan, instrumental in guidance and control of the Perseverance rover in Mars 2020 Mission, said: “In the first phase of the mission, samples from Mars were successfully collected by the rover. Now, NASA and its international partners are working on how we can bring these back to Earth. Once we have it here, we can use the appropriate scientific equipment on Earth to research those samples for signs of past life.”

Answering whether governments should increase budgets for space research programmes, she said: “As a space engineer, I would always want more funds being allocated by the government for space research programs. There are many different ways we can use the funds apart from

satellite projects.” Asked if Artificial Intelligence will replace humans in terms of space explorations, she said: “The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is becoming prominent now but our space exploration vehicles have always been autonomous such as the Perseverance rover. Real time decisions in space are being made by computers.”