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Rosen, Paul

Publications and source records attributed to Rosen, Paul.

At least 19 records

Science Status of the NASA-ISRO SAR Mission

The NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Mission is entering its second phase of integration and test, preparing for a launch in January 2023. The mission will exploit synthetic aperture radar to map Earth’s surface every 12 days, persistently on ascending and descending portions of the orbit, over all land and ice-covered surfaces. The mission’s primary objectives will be to study Earth land and ice deformation, and ecosystems, in areas of common interest to the US and Indian science communities. This single observatory solution with an L-band (24 cm wavelength) and S-band (10 cm wavelength) radar has a swath of over 240 km at fine resolution, and will operate primarily in a dual-polarimetric mode in an exact repeat orbit. The science teams at NASA and ISRO are working jointly to finalize the joint science plan, calibration and validation plan, and science products, and operational procedures.

Kumar, Raj

Future SAR Imaging Systems: Goals, Plans, Challenges and Opportunities

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Earth observation data are becoming increasingly ubiquitous as new spaceborne systems become operational and their data are made available to scientists and applications users. The characteristic of active sensors like SAR to be able to observe Earth independent of weather or solar illumination, coupled with regular data acquisition, fosters reliability and encourages the investment in algorithm and product development toward a beneficial result. As SAR systems typically contain proprietary or nationally important technologies, civilian SAR systems are typically developed with a national focus, or in the case of the European Union, with the Union’s focus. As a result, when viewed from a global perspective, SAR programs can be generally viewed as independent developments, each with their own requirements, schedules, development approaches, and data policies. At the same time, these systems can be expensive, and particularly in an era of increasingly open data policies, coordination of programs could reduce redundancy in observations, increase sampling density and measurement diversity, and improve dependability of data streams in the long term. Since 2018, agency representatives from NASA, ESA, DLR, JAXA, ISRO, ASI, and CONAE have been evaluating the possibilities for programmatic and technical coordination of future SAR systems, data sharing, and scientific exploitation. In this paper, we describe the work in discovering trends and possibilities associated with flight systems, by evaluating current and future plans for SAR systems around the world, and identifying opportunities for coordination.

Zink, Manfred

NASA's Surface Deformation and Change Mission Study

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine 2017 Decadal Survey of Earth Science and Applications identified geodetic measurements of surface deformation and related change as one of the top five "observables" to be prioritized in NASA's program going forward. In response, NASA commissioned a multi-center Surface Deformation and Change (SDC) team to perform a five year study of mission architectures that would support SDC observables and provide the most value to the diverse science and applications communities it serves. The study is being conducted in phases, in which the science and applications capabilities identified in the Decadal Survey are interpreted and refined, candidate mission architectures and associated technologies to support these needs are identified, architectures are assessed against a science value framework specific to SDC, and recommendations to NASA are made. Ultimately, NASA will decide which amongst these recommendations will proceed to mission formulation. As synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was identified as the prime sensor technology to satisfy SDC observational needs, a key component of the SDC study is to assess the current state of the art in SAR sensor and spacecraft systems and components. The number of SAR systems, both civil and commercial, is growing rapidly, requiring that mission architectures not only consider technology, but availability of data from other missions, possible partnerships or collaborations, and even data purchase. The mechanism for assessment involves development of an end-to-end science performance evaluation tool for multi-satellite constellations, which feeds into a science value framework that considers science performance, technological programmatic risks, and cost. This paper will present an overview of the ongoing study including the architectures under consideration and the technology road map needed to achieve the objectives of the mission.

Rosen, Paul

Measuring Small- and Medium-Scale TEC Variations and Irregularities from Ground-Based GNSS Observations

This paper describes approaches to measuring small- and medium-scale spatial rate of vertical TEC from GNSS observations. The horizontal scale size measured by small-scale TEC spatial rate (STSR, in TECU/km), including its latitude and longitude components, ranges from about 1.8 km to 15 km at 450 km altitude. The medium-scale TEC gradient components can be derived from global ionospheric map (GIM) based TEC gradient (GBTG) over about 110 km horizontally at low and middle latitudes, with smaller scale lengths in the longitude component in the polar region. Our analyses of GPS data show that the latitude component of STSR and GBTG is much larger than the longitude component. The spatial rates in most regions of the globe are relatively small, and their absolute mean values are mostly under 0.03 TECU/km. However, STSR is substantially larger, often greater than 0.05 TECU/km, in the equatorial ionospheric anomaly (EIA) region than in other regions, or when ionospheric disturbances occur. The disturbances include ionospheric irregularities, significant changes of regional ionospheric state during space weather events, and traveling ionospheric disturbances. Combined global TEC gradient (CGTG) with STSR and GBTG is also shown in this paper as snapshots using data from networks of more than three thousand GNSS receivers. The comparisons between STSR and GBTG indicate that their regional variation patterns are consistent though STSR is often larger than GBTG in the equatorial anomaly region or during ionospheric disturbances particularly during space weather events. The difference is attributed to the fact that the global TEC mapping technique may smooth the gradient in regions where spatial variations are large at small- and medium scales.

Akopian, Vardan