ISRO Satellite Mission To Monitor Earth Temperature Amid Extreme Heatwave

India has been experiencing an unprecedented heat wave with many parts of north India breaching 50 degrees Celsius. Now Indian space agency ISRO, in collaboration with its French counterpart, will launch a dedicated satellite to monitor Earth's surface temperatures. 

As a much-needed recording, the satellite will 'help in comprehensive assessment of urban heat islands' and also address critical water and food security challenges, focusing on the impacts of human-induced climate change and efficient water resource management through evapotranspiration monitoring. No date has been announced for the launch and the satellite is still cooking with a possible launch in 2025.

The TRISHNA, or Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment, mission, a collaborative endeavour between ISRO and the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), is engineered to deliver high spatial and high temporal resolution monitoring of Earth's surface temperature, emissivity, biophysical and radiation variables for surface energy budgeting at regional to global scale, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement.

India and France have been all-weather friends in space technology and have earlier launched satellites - Megha-Tropiques and Saral - to monitor Earth.

The satellite will use a set of infrared sensors - developed by India and France in collaboration - to monitor the temperature. This also comes on the back of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) accepting that some temperature sensors on its automatic weather stations have been overestimating the temperature and the readings were erroneous.

Measuring temperature is an important function for monitoring satellite health but now to do it remotely for Earth from nearly 800 kilometres above Earth calls for a new development of scientific instruments.

The satellite will operate in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 761 km, with a local time of 12:30 PM at the equator. This orbit will provide a spatial resolution of 57 meters for land and coastal areas and 1 km for oceanic and polar regions. The mission is designed for a five-year operational life.

TRISHNA's primary objectives include detailed monitoring of the energy and water budgets of the continental biosphere for quantifying terrestrial water stress and water use and high-resolution observation of water quality and dynamics in coastal and inland waters. In addition, as secondary objectives, the TRISHNA mission will also help in a comprehensive assessment of urban heat islands, detection of thermal anomalies linked to volcanic activity and geothermal resources, and precise monitoring of snow-melt runoff and glacier dynamics. The mission will also provide valuable data on aerosol optical depth, atmospheric water vapour, and cloud cover.

The TRISHNA mission is expected to signify a substantial advancement in remote sensing technology, addressing critical water and food security issues and providing essential data to help bring out sustainable solutions for policy/decision makers, watershed managers, agro-industries and farming community over inland and coastland. With its high-resolution high-repeat imaging capabilities, it would enhance our understanding of Earth's natural processes and support global efforts in climate change mitigation through optimized resource management.

The TRISHNA satellite will come close on the back of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite (NISAR) which will also help monitor deformations on Earth and also help monitor Climate Change. It is the world's single most expensive civilian earth imaging satellite ever to be made.

With global collaborations ISRO is now seriously studying the effects of Climate Change and global warming, much needed for India specific data.