NASA’s Largest Satellite Antenna Ever Has Just Unfurled in Space

A Flower-like satellite has “bloomed” successful outer space, unfolding to uncover the largest radar antenna reflector ever enactment into orbit. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), a associated task betwixt the US abstraction bureau and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), launched connected July 30 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center successful southeastern India, earlier unfurling to its afloat size 17 days later.

The spacecraft is present acceptable to marque full-scale observations of the Earth, and volition usage radar to way changes connected our planet’s aboveground successful unprecedented resolution. It tin grounds the question of crystal sheets and glaciers, crustal deformation caused by earthquakes and landslides, and changes successful wood and wetland ecosystems, down to an accuracy of a fewer centimeters for definite types of terrain. The purpose is for NISAR information to assistance with decision-making successful a wide scope of fields, including catastrophe responses, infrastructure, cultivation policy, and nutrient security.

“The palmy deployment of NISAR’s reflector marks a important milestone successful the capabilities of the satellite,” Karen St. Germain, manager of the Earth Science Division astatine NASA Headquarters, said successful a statement.

A Satellite With Two Eyes

NISAR’s antenna reflector—the instrumentality it uses to transmit and person radar signals—measures 39 feet across, making it the largest specified instrumentality ever enactment into orbit by NASA. Made from gold-plated ligament mesh, the reflector was attached to the outer similar a folded umbrella. During the 4 days pursuing the launch, the outer dilatory extended its boom, earlier the framework of the antenna, which had been held nether tension, was released connected August 15, allowing the reflector to “bloom” to its afloat size.

NISAR is the archetypal outer to transportation 2 types of synthetic aperture radar, oregon SAR: L-band and S-band. The erstwhile penetrates the wood canopy and clouds to observe crustal deformation and crystal expanse movement. S-band is delicate to moisture successful snowfall screen and changes successful vegetation. By combining the two, it is imaginable to grounds a multilayered grounds of divers phenomena ranging from earthquakes and volcanic enactment to deforestation. The elephantine reflector serves arsenic the “eye” that is indispensable to some systems, focusing the transmitted radar erstwhile it is sent down to Earth and receiving and focusing these signals erstwhile they bounce backmost up to the satellite.

“Synthetic aperture radar, successful principle, works similar the lens of a camera, which focuses airy to marque a crisp image. The size of the lens, called the aperture, determines the sharpness of the image,” Paul Rosen, NISAR’s task idiosyncratic astatine the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said successful a statement. “Using peculiar interferometric techniques that comparison images implicit time, NISAR enables researchers and information users to make 3D movies of changes happening connected Earth’s surface.”

Technology Decades successful the Making

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been processing radars for usage connected satellites since the 1970s, launching the world’s archetypal water reflection satellite, Seasat, successful 1978, and revealing the topography of Venus’s cloud-covered aboveground with the planetary probe Magellan successful the 1990s.

A culmination of cognition gained implicit the decades, NISAR is simply a merchandise of some US and Indian technology: NASA provided the L-band SAR and information communications equipment, portion India’s ISRO was liable for the S-band SAR and the outer bus—the infrastructure that handles power, communications, and the satellite’s orientation. ISRO’s crushed presumption was liable for the motorboat and archetypal operations, and experts from some countries worked unneurotic to show the deployment operations.