Northrop’s Astro Aerospace to Produce Radar Antennas for NASA’s NISAR Satellite; John Alvarez Comments

A Northrop Grumman business unit has won a contract from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design and produce radar antennas for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite.

Northrop’s Astro Aerospace will use and integrate its AstroMesh mesh reflector with the radar-based imaging satellite’s 12-meter aperture antenna, Northrop said Friday.

“We are very proud to once again work with JPL and support an incredibly important Earth science program,” said John Alvarez, general manager of Astro Aerospace.

NISAR is a joint satellite project of NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization that aims to observe and collect data about the Earth’s ice sheet movements, natural disasters and other ecosystem disturbances.

The satellite will operate through S-band and L-band radio frequencies.

Astro Aerospace also provided the 6-meter antenna for the Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite that JPL launched in January.