“NISAR will generate more data on a daily basis — 80 terabytes per day — than any other observation satellites that NASA or ISRO have operated.”
The NISAR satellite is the first joint NASA-ISRO development project and it cost $1.5 billion to build. It carries dual-frequency radar that can measure surface motion down to one centimeter, and all 80 terabytes of daily data will be freely available to the public. NASA provided the L-band radar and India provided the bus, the S-band radar, and the launch vehicle. This is genuine international space cooperation that produces tangible scientific infrastructure rather than another billionaire vanity project.