Blog #6

At the last visit at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) we met with two scientists who gave us presentations on what they have been working on currently. The first presentation was by Yunjin Kim who is the NISAR Project Manager. In his presentation he talked to us about the NISAR mission. The major international partner of the project is the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The Target launch date is suppose to be December 2021. NASA-ISRO SAR will radar the earth’s surface to explore issues such as climate change. Yunjin Kim explained how radars work and why they are reliable. The SweepSAR technique is what allows NISAR to collect full resolution SAR data over a large swath. SweepSAR is multiple SARs in one radar system to receive a large imaging swath.
            During the visit we also had another scientist come talk to us about UAVSAR. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is a radar instrument that collects measurements of changes on the Earth. The radar is flown over the same area multiple times to determine how the land has changed. Currently it is studying climate change in the Arctic and looking into Earth deformation after major volcanoes or earthquakes. UAVSAR was launched from Edwards Air Force Base, California in August 2007.
The radar sends and receives radio waves to get information about different features on Earth. The waves travel vertically and horizontally creating what is called polarization. The radar pod is located beneath the Gulfstream-III and that’s where all the data is collected. Currently the airborne radar continues to study active volcanoes. There are currently three volcanoes that are active right now. One of the volcanoes is Hawaii’s most current active volcano Kilauea. Kilauea is the most active of the five volcanoes that form Hawaii. It is located on the southern shore of the island and is about 500,000 years old. The radar uses a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar that sends pulses of microwave energy from the plane to the ground to detect deformations. Overall, UAVSAR has collected thousands of flight lines of radar data since 2007 in Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Vegetation, Ice & glaciers, Soil moisture, and Oceanography.
           



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