Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine April 2017 - 46

Conversation with Paul Rosen
The section has continued to grow
since 2012, with many of the missions
described above moving into late development and many new missions
proposed and selected. For example,
there are two radar sounders being
developed to go to Jupiter to observe
Europa.
Riccardo: You know that Europe
has been very active in the last 25
years in developing free-flying SAR
systems, with many developments
carried out by the European Space
Agency [ESA], national agency contributions, and more recently, within
the EU [European Union] program
named Copernicus, [which] culminated with the launch of the Sentinel-1A
and Sentinel-1B systems. How about
the US scenario in this field?
Paul: As I mentioned, I am now
the project scientist for the NASAISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar
(NISAR) mission, a US-India partnership to fly an L-band and S-band
polarimetric radar in Earth orbit to
measure changes on the Earth due
to natural hazards, ice sheet dynamics, and ecosystems dynamics. This
mission has similar observational
characteristics to Sentinel-1A/B, in
that it has fast revisit (12 days) and
complete global coverage over every cycle. And the data are free and
open, as has always been the case
for NASA Earth Science missions.
Figure 6.
NASA's observation program apA Magellan SAR image acquired in the northeastern Atalanta Region of Venus. The image shows a comproach is very different from ESA's.
plex impact crater 69 km in diameter, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radardark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater except to
Sentinel is operational, while NISAR
the west, suggesting an east-bound impactor. Magellan also had an altimeter to measure topography on a
is considered a scientific mission.
kilometer scale. Future missions to Venus may use InSAR techniques to map not just an image of the planNASA generally does not implement
et at fine resolution but also its fine-scale topography (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov, image PIA00479).
operational missions, leaving that to
NOAA
[the
National
Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration],
scientific instruments and succeeded in capturing a numbut they will fly systems to create continuous scientific records
ber of radar missions: SMAP [Soil Moisture Active Passive],
for long time series (like altimetry). SAR systems compete with
SWOT [Surface Water & Ocean Topography], and DESDynI
other NASA science missions that use radar, such as SMAP and
[Deformation, Ecosystem Structure, and Dynamics of Ice]. We
SWOT. All these missions are challenging and costly, as they are
operationalized our airborne L-band SAR system, acquiring
trying to track changes on the Earth in different regimes over
over 500 hours of data per year for science purposes. We were
their lifetime. NISAR may be the first of a series of time-series
engaged in many technology development tasks, ranging from
SAR missions in the US if the science is compelling and the
high-efficiency transmitters for space to digital beamforming
follow-on missions are affordable. The emerging commercial
techniques, millimeter-wave radars, and CubeSat radar conmarkets for radar data further complicate the science case. For
cepts. Science has always been a priority in the section, and
these reasons, I believe NASA will continue to have a more hetour work in precipitation, ecosystems dynamics, solid earth
erogeneous approach to radar mission development.
and natural hazards, societal applications, and other areas has
Riccardo: Can you also tell us your opinion on the new frontiers
been defining the role of radars in Earth and planetary sciof radar developments for Earth and planetary science missions?
ence.
46

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

APRIL 2017


http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov

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