Radar satellite launched by India and NASA will track minuscule changes to Earth's land and ice

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA and India paired up to launch an Earth-mapping satellite on Wednesday capable of tracking even the slightest shifts in land and ice.

The $1.3 billion mission will help forecasters and first responders stay one step ahead of floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions and other disasters, according to scientists.

Rocketing to orbit from India, the satellite will survey virtually all of Earth’s terrain multiple times. Its two radars — one from the U.S. and the other from India — will operate day and night, peering through clouds, rain and foliage to collect troves of data in extraordinary detail.

Microwave signals beamed down to Earth from the dual radars will bounce back up to the satellite’s super-sized antenna reflector perched at the end of a boom like a beach umbrella. Scientists will compare the incoming and outgoing signals as the spacecraft passes over the same locations twice every 12 days, teasing out changes as small as a fraction of an inch (1 centimeter).

“Congratulations India!” India’s minister of science and technology, Jitendra Singh, said via X once the satellite safely reached orbit. The mission “will benefit the entire world community.”

NASA’s deputy associate administrator Casey Swails, part of a small delegation that traveled to India for the launch, said it “really shows the world what our two nations can do. But more so than that, it really is a pathfinder for the relationship building,.”

It will take a full week to extend the satellite’s 30-foot (9-meter) boom and open the 39-foot-in-diameter (12-meter) drum-shaped reflector made of gold-plated wire mesh. Science operations should begin by the end of October.

Among the satellite’s most pressing measurements: melting glaciers and polar ice sheets; shifting groundwater supplies; motion and stress of land surfaces prompting landslides and earthquakes; and forest and wetland disruptions boosting carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

It's “a first-of-its-kind, jewel radar satellite that will change the way we study our home planet and better predict a natural disaster before it strikes," NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said ahead of liftoff. She was part of the NASA delegation that attended the launch in person.

NASA is contributing $1.2 billion to the three-year mission; it supplied the low-frequency radar and reflector. The Indian Space Research Organization’s $91 million share includes the higher-frequency radar and main satellite structure, as well as the launch from a barrier island in the Bay of Bengal. It’s the biggest space collaboration between the two countries.

The satellite called NISAR — short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar — will operate from a near-polar-circling orbit 464 miles (747 kilometers) high. It will join dozens of Earth observation missions already in operation by the U.S. and India.

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The NISAR satellite, a joint mission by NASA and ISRO, lifts off aboard a GSLV-F16 rocket, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan)

The NISAR satellite, a joint mission by NASA and ISRO, lifts off aboard a GSLV-F16 rocket, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan)

The NISAR satellite, a joint mission by NASA and ISRO, lifts off aboard a GSLV-F16 rocket, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan)

This photo provided by NASA shows part of the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite resting in a thermal vacuum chamber in August 2020 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)

This photo provided by NASA shows the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite on July 18, 2025, at the Indian Space Research Organization's Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, Tirupati district, Andhra Pradesh, India. (Indian Space Research Organization/NASA via AP)

This image provided by NASA shows an Earth-mapping satellite, the first collaborative mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, launching from India on Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (NASA via AP)

This image provided by NASA shows an Earth-mapping satellite, the first collaborative mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, launching from India on Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (NASA via AP)

This image provided by NASA shows an Earth-mapping satellite, the first collaborative mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, launching from India on Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (NASA via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea have seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says has ties to Venezuela, part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media that the U.S. Coast Guard had boarded the Motor Tanker Veronica early Thursday. She said the ship had previously passed through Venezuelan waters and was operating in defiance of President Donald Trump’s "established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”

U.S. Southern Command said Marines and sailors launched from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to take part in the operation alongside a Coast Guard tactical team, which Noem said conducted the boarding as in previous raids. The military said the ship was seized “without incident.”

Noem posted a brief video that appeared to show part of the ship’s capture. The black-and-white footage showed helicopters hovering over the deck of a merchant vessel while armed troops dropped down on the deck by rope.

The Veronica is the sixth sanctioned tanker seized by U.S. forces as part of the effort by Trump’s administration to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products and the fourth since the U.S. ouster of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid almost two weeks ago.

The Veronica last transmitted its location on Jan. 3 as being at anchor off the coast of Aruba, just north of Venezuela’s main oil terminal. According to the data it transmitted at the time, it was partially filled with crude.

Days later, the Veronica became one of at least 16 tankers that left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine U.S. forces have set up to block sanctioned ships from conducting trade, according to Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com.

Madani said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship movements.

The ship is currently listed as flying the flag of Guyana and is considered part of the shadow fleet that moves cargoes of oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.

According to its registration data, the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, owned and managed by a company in Russia. In addition, a tanker with the same registration number previously sailed under the name Pegas and was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for being associated with a Russian company moving cargoes of illicit oil.

As with prior posts about such raids, Noem and the military framed the seizure as part of an effort to enforce the law. Noem argued that the multiple captures show that “there is no outrunning or escaping American justice.”

However, other officials in Trump's Republican administration have made clear that they see the actions as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.

Trump met with executives from oil companies last week to discuss his goal of investing $100 billion in Venezuela to repair and upgrade its oil production and distribution. His administration has said it expects to sell at least 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil.

This story has been corrected to show the Veronica is the fourth, not the third, tanker seized by U.S. forces since Maduro's capture and the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, not the Galileo.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at Harry Reid International Airport, Nov. 22, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File)