NISAR

Paul Rosen, an electrical engineer and product designer, was the first person to talk to us about NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab’s newest mission, NISAR. Essentially, NISAR is a satellite that will be sent out to space in 2021 which can scan the earth in resolutions that have never been done before. NISAR is a collaboration with an Indian space agency. There are several other satellites out there that already do a similar thing to what NISAR will accomplish, but the data that they provide is nowhere near as consistent, long term, and detailed. NISAR will be able to take high definition scans of the earth every week and every other week from a different angle.

NISAR will use two different satellites to scan the earth to measure soil water levels, atmosphere changes, geographical changes, changes in ice sheets, measure biomass and more. What makes this project different is the consistency and depth of the swaths that will be used to scan the earth. Although the satellites that will be used are also very similar to SMAP, an already existing project, the dishes will have much greater capabilities. They will be twelve diameters wide and won’t have any rotation. This satellite will produce thirty petabytes of raw data in one year, all of which will be public information and accessible by every country for analyzation.

One of the most significant things this project will do is measure the soil moisture and levels throughout the world. This will be incredibly useful for agriculture, as this information will be able to tell farmers what fields would be used and how much damage pumping water from the ground will create. There is actually a huge problem of the ground sinking in the central valley because so much water has been pumped from the soil because of the drought. This sinking can be several feet a year, but is a fact that is not well known by the general populous. When water is drained from the clay underneath the earth, it condenses particles in the clay under the surface levels, which significantly lowers the ground. The entire central valley is sinking because of this which is a huge threat to infrastructure, agriculture, and the people who live there.

Another amazing thing that this project will be able to do it measure atmospheric changes and additions of carbon and smoke. This will be important information to watch the rates of global warming, the health of our atmosphere and environment and how it affects biomass. NISAR can monitor the melting of ice as well and how this affects the oceans. All of this is important information which will be very telling about the changes that are happening on earth.

One of the most fascinating and comical parts of the lectures we received on NISAR was the scientist’s lack of a color scheme that allows them to systematically and consistently diagram the changes they see in the earth. Each scientist arbitrarily chooses colors to represent different depths, movements and so on. There is no universal system, so each diagram can be read in a different way by the untrained person. I think this is a really interesting problem that I hope one day artists will help to solve so that when all of this new data from NISAR comes in, there will be a way to diagram it.