ISRO, NASA to Explore Mars Together

BANGALORE: India and the United States on Tuesday formally announced the formation of a NASA-ISRO Mars working group, which will establish procedures for co-operation between the two countries in the exploring Mars.

The move comes barely a week after both space agencies inserted spacecraft into the Martian orbit.

Besides the Joint working group, another agreement defining roles in the building of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) was also signed. It is named NISAR and is due for launch in 2020.

The Mars group will help in the co-ordination and sharing of data between MOM and MAVEN as well as with other Mars missions.

The NISAR programme aims at making global measurements of the causes behind changes in land surface. Other areas of possible study include ecosystem disturbances, ice sheet collapse and natural hazards, using two radar frequencies (L-Band and S-Band) to measure changes in the planet’s surface with an accuracy of less than a centimetre.

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The New Indian Express
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