Noting India's success in the Chandrayaan-3 mission, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday that India has done something that no other country has done, and it deserve every bit of praise for the accomplishment.
"My congratulations to India. You have landed first around the south pole of the moon. We will have a commercial lander that will land next year, but India was the first. Others have tried, and others have failed. But India was successful. You deserve every bit of praise for this accomplishment. It's very significant," he said while speaking to reporters in Mumbai.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson on NISAR
Nelson also mentioned the NISAR mission, stating that with the accomplishment of the four major observatories, a complete 3D composite model will be set up to find out what is happening to the Earth.
"This is a major observatory that we are putting up with the Indian government. There are four major observatories. Once we get all four up, along with the 25 spacecraft already in orbit, we will have a complete 3D composite model of what is exactly happening to the Earth. We want to preserve our home."
He added, "The first of these great observatories is NISAR. It will observe all the surfaces of the Earth. It will see any changes in the water, the land, and the ice. That will be another set of data that will help us understand what is happening to the Earth... That mission is coming in the first part of the next year. The rocket is provided by the Indian Space Agency, and then we have built the spacecraft together... It is being prepared in Bangalore at ISRO."
NISAR is a NASA-ISRO collaborative Earth-observing mission
NISAR, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and ISRO, will help researchers explore how changes in Earth's forest and wetland ecosystems are affecting the global carbon cycle and influencing climate change.
NISAR is also a joint mission by NASA and ISRO, and when in orbit, its sophisticated radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The data it collects will help researchers understand two key functions of both ecosystem types, the capture and the release of carbon.
The NISAR satellite, equipped with advanced radar systems, will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The data collected will help researchers understand the capture and release of carbon in these ecosystems.
NASA intends to return to the Moon
The NASA administrator stated that they are again going to the moon, and this time they will be accompanied by their international partners and will have an international crew on the first mission with the astronauts to the moon.
"Well, there is a tremendous opportunity in the future for expanded commercial investment from India. Now at NASA, we have commercial partners, so, for example, we are going back to the moon, but this time we go back with our commercial partners. And we go with our international partners. In the first mission with the astronauts to the moon, which will be a year from now, it will have an international crew. So commercial efforts are a big part of our space program, and that will be the same here in India as well," he added.
On Thursday, Nelson visited the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, where the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite is undergoing testing before its scheduled launch in 2024. The NASA chief is on a visit to India and also had an interaction with students of Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum (VITM) in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
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