SPACEBORNE IMAGING RADAR-C/X-BAND SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR
(SIR-C/X-SAR) L, C bands February 23, 1995 New
Orleans, Louisiana
This image of the area surrounding the city of New Orleans,
Louisiana in the southeastern United States demonstrates the ability
of multi-frequency imaging radar to distinguish different types
of land cover. The dark area in the center is Lake Pontchartrain.
The thin line running across the lake is a causeway connecting
New Orleans to the city of Mandeville. Lake Borgne is the dark
area in the lower right of the image. The Mississippi River appears
as a dark, wavy line in the lower left. The white dots on the
Mississippi are ships. The French Quarter is the brownish square
near the left center of the image. The New Orleans Airport is
the bright spot near the center, jutting out into Lake Pontchartrain.
The image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar C/X-Band
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) during orbit 39 of space
shuttle Endeavour on October 2, 1994. The area is located at 30.10
degrees north latitude and 89.1 degrees west longitude. The area
shown is approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) by 50 kilometers
(30 miles). The colors in this image were obtained using the following
radar channels: red represents the L-band (horizontally transmitted
and received); green represents the C-band (horizontally transmitted
and received); blue represents the L-band (vertically transmitted
and received). The green areas are primarily vegetation consisting
of swamp land and swamp forest (bayou) growing on sandy soil,
while the pink areas are associated with reflections from buildings
in urban and suburban areas. Different tones and colors in the
vegetation areas will be studied by scientists to see how effective
imaging radar data is in discriminating between different types
of wetlands. Accurate maps of coastal wetland areas are important
to ecologists studying wild fowl and the coastal environment.
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Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar
(SIR-C/X-SAR) is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. The radars
illuminate Earth with microwaves, allowing detailed observations
at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR
uses three microwave wavelengths: L-band (24 cm), C-Band (6 cm)
and X-Band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the
international scientific community to better understand the global
environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented
by aircraft and ground studies, willgive scientists clearer insights
into those environmental changeswhich are caused by nature and
those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed
by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. X-SAR was developed by the
Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space agency,
Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the
Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), with the
Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft und Raumfahrt e.V.(DLR),
the major partner in science, operations and data processing of
X-SAR.
