UAF facility to distribute new satellite’s imagery

NASA has announced that unprecedented, detailed radar views of Earth from a future satellite will be distributed by the Alaska Satellite Facility’s Distributed Active Archive Center. ASF is part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

Data collected from the satellite, to be launched in 2020, 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 mission is a partnership between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization. The new satellite’s name, NISAR, is an acronym for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar.

“ASF is pleased to be playing such a key role in this important mission,” said ASF director Nettie La Belle-Hamer. “We look forward to adding NISAR data to the data holdings and support we provide for the science community.”

NASA selected the satellite facility to distribute NISAR data based on its 25-year record of supporting and understanding the SAR user community; knowledge of numerous instruments, data collections, missions and radar modes; and ability to handle various stages of data processing and distribution.

“The ASF DAAC provides the SAR data needs of a very diverse constituency of science and applications needs including geology, hydrology, ecology and natural hazards,” said Craig Dobson, NISAR program scientist for NASA. “This breadth reflects the science and applications reach of the NISAR mission.  The selection of ASF to be the NISAR DAAC demonstrates NASA’s expectation that ASF can successfully meet the archive and distribution challenges of this exciting mission.”

In addition to NASA’s objectives,  the mission will address applications relevant to India, including monitoring of agricultural biomass over India, snow and glacier studies in the Himalayas, Indian coastal and near-shore ocean studies, and disaster monitoring and assessment.

Synthetic aperture radar bounces a radar signal off the surface of Earth to detect physical properties including surface shape, surface roughness and vegetation cover. Unlike optical sensor technology, such as Landsat, SAR can see through darkness, clouds and rain.

ASF chief scientist Franz Meyer, who has served on the mission’s Science Definition Team, is particularly enthusiastic about plans for NISAR to feature full, global interferometric SAR capabilities, which he calls “a game changer.” The technology uses two or more radar images to measure changes on the Earth’s surface, such as deformation from earthquakes or volcanoes.

The ASF ground station will also support NISAR with downlink, uplink and coherent tracking services. The full-service, satellite-tracking ground station is the only university-operated ground station in the Near Earth Network, an international array of ground stations. The network, managed by NASA, provides services to a range of customers.

ON THE WEB: www.asf.alaska.edu