Cutting through the dust: Radar shows moon’s true face for first time

We’ve seen a serious series of super moons this summer and the show’s not over yet. Mark your calendars: the next one will light up on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

While it may seem sunny and clear up on a super moon, a steady rain of space dust and particles is zipping in and striking the moon day in and day out. Undetectable from Earth, these tiny travelers are moving fast.

“Most particles hit the ground at several kilometers per second or more,” explains Bruce Campbell, a geologist at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “A particle of dust moving at that speed will break a pretty good chunk off a rock.” This particle rain is the dominant erosive effect on the moon, part of an endless process of the rocks being broken down and the dust gradually building up.

This radar image reveals how the lunar impact crater known as Aristillus looks beneath its cover of dust. The radar echoes reveal geologic features of the large debris field created by the force of the impact. The dark “halo” surrounding the crater is due to pulverized debris beyond the rugged, radar-bright rim deposits. The image also shows traces of lava-like features produced when lunar rock melted from the heat of the impact. The crater is approximately 34 miles in diameter and 2 miles deep. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Bruce Campbell, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum; Arecibo/NAIC; NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Iran is going to establish Space-Based Radar System

Iran has accomplished building its Sepehr (Sky) radar with a range of 2500km and hopes to deploy and launch the system in coming months, a senior commander announced on Sunday.

“We hope that we can launch a major part of the Sepehr space radar system by the end of the next (Iranian) year (March 21, 2014-March 20, 2015),” Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli told FNA.

“By launching the Sepehr space radar, we can inform our vessels of remote threats in time and monitor and detect threats before they are put into action, and start our defense in depth and away from our borders,” he added.

Esmayeeli underlined that Iranian engineers and technicians are making strenuous efforts to launch the Sepehr radar system which is seen as a hi-tech product.

In relevant remarks in February 2013, former Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that Iran planned to develop different types of radar systems with satellite detecting capabilities.

Addressing the second conference on radar technology systems here in Tehran at the time, Vahidi said Iran has witnessed “a jump” in the field of radar designing and manufacturing.

“Today, we have many achievements in different fields. Radars covering ranges of 500km to 700km have been manufactured and production of radar systems with 1,000km to 3,000km of range is underway,” Vahidi explained.

He added that Iran is trying to develop radar systems to detect satellites, and said to do so, the radar systems are connected in phased arrangements to cover very long ranges and detect and track satellites.

Iranian officials have announced that the country has now reached self-sufficiency in producing radar systems in different frequencies and for various ranges.

Source

CloudSat satellite

 
Figure 1: Artist's rendition of the CloudSat spacecraft (image credit: NASA)

Detail description of satellite, instruments and mission’s status

Application of Polarimetric SAR to Earth Remote Sensing by Jakob van Zyl and Yunjin Kim

TU1.L09.1 - APPLICATION OF POLARIMETRIC SAR TO EARTH REMOTE SENSING from grssieee

EDA Approves Next-Gen Space-Based Military Surveillance System

The European Defence Agency (EDA) has agreed to approve a project for the next generation of European military earth observation satellites.

The multinational space-based imaging system (MUSIS) project has been launched by six European Union Member States: Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Italy and Spain.

The MUSIS project aims at establishing a multinational space-based imaging system for surveillance, reconnaissance and observation to ensure continuity of services from the current French Helios II, German SAR LUPE and Italian Cosmo-Skymed and Pléiades systems, from 2015-2017 onwards.

EDA Head, Javier Solana said that he welcomed the initiative of the EU member states in approving this critical capability.

"Space-based related assets are critical to improve European military capabilities, including for information gathering," Solana said.

EDA's chief executive, Alexander Weis said that the EDA was proving its value by bringing together member states as well as by connecting military to civil space agendas.

"We will liaise with the commission and the European Space Agency to ensure complementing research and technology, and to seek other synergies," said Weis.

One of the roles for EDA will be to seek synergies with earth observation programmes on the civilian side, in particular with the global monitoring for environment and security (GMES) programme of the European Commission.

By Daniel Garrun.

Cassini RADAR view of Titan's north pole

This mosaic is composed of all synthetic-aperture-radar maps of Titan's polar regions acquired by Cassini to date. It has been cropped and reduced in size by 50% from an even larger mosaic available on NASA's Planetary Photojournal. Approximately 60 percent of Titan's northern polar region (poleward of 60 degrees north latitude) has been mapped as of October 2007, and of this area, about 14% appears to be covered with hydrocarbon lakes. The radar images are grayscale; they have been colored here with a color map that applies blue colors to the materials that are darkest to the RADAR instrument, and yellow colors to the materials that are brightest. This color scheme highlights the apparent lakes, but also shows that many lake-like features are not as dark as other lakes, and that darker channels appear to run down the interiors of less dark lakes.

The image is a polar projection, with zero longitude (the sub-Saturnian hemisphere) toward the bottom. The leading hemisphere (centered at 90 degrees W) is to the left, and the trailing hemisphere (centered at 270 degrees W) is to the right. The largest lakes are clustered in an area on Titan's trailing hemisphere.

NASA / JPL-Caltech