BENGALURU - India launched on Wednesday a $1.5 billion, first-of-its-kind radar imaging satellite built in collaboration with NASA, deploying it to help enhance global monitoring of climate change and natural disasters.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR satellite, is the first such collaboration between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and US space agency NASA.
It took off from India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 1210 GMT or 1740 local time atop a medium-lift rocket, marking a milestone in space cooperation and bolstering India's profile in low-cost, high-impact satellite missions.
NISAR is the world's first radar imaging satellite to use two radar frequencies - the L-band provided by NASA and the S-band developed by ISRO - to track minute changes in the Earth's surface, including movements as small as a centimetre, the space agencies have said.
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