Post #6

On our latest trip to the Nasa Jet propulsion lab we were lectured by two scientists, both of them gave us more insight on the new Nisar mission that is set to launch in 2020 or 2021. One of the scientists gave us an in depth explanation of the radar that the Nisar satellite will use to indicate these natural disaster. Before I get into discussing a little more about radars, I just want to explain what the Nisar mission is. Nisar is a US and Indian SAR mission, in partnership with ISRO, used for studying hazards and global environmental change  including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.

Data collected from NISAR will reveal information about the evolution and state of Earth's crust, help scientists better understand our planet's processes and changing climate, and aid future resource and hazard management. The satellite will be the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequency and it is planned to be used for remote sensing to observe and understand natural processes of the Earth. Its  mission duration would last for 3.25 years and would be launched in India.
The satellite will be 3-axis stabilised and is planned to be launched into a Sun-synchronous dawn to dusk orbit and has passed the first stage of the design validation phase. A Sun-synchronous orbit is a nearly polar orbit around Earth (also called geocentric orbit) in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local solar time. This type of orbit can place a satellite in constant sunlight and is useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites. The satellite has already been reviewed and approved by NASA. The scientific instruments that the satellite will use is the an L-band (24-centimeter wavelength) Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar and S-band (12-centimeter wavelength) Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar. The S band is used by weather radar, surface ship radar, and some communications satellites, especially those used by NASA to communicate with the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. The L band is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers designation for the range of frequencies in the radio spectrum from 1 to 2 gigahertz (GHz).

After the lecture about radars was finished, Maggi Glasscoe came in to giver her presentation. Glasscoe is apart of the Nisar team as well and works in the applications area. The applications area uses data to help mitigate and respond to disasters.  Not only does this information benefit the general public but it also aides researchers and agencies with getting the information that they need. Glasscoe’s presentation was really interesting to me because although there was a focus of science in the presentation the majority of it was more on the social aspect and means of spreading out the data that the satellite will give out. They focus on societal challenges and what this data can help contribute with whether it is global food security, freshwater availability, or human health. Glasscoes presentation was one of my favorites because she talked a lot about the politics of the applications area and how some countries in the past have responded to them.

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