Washington: American space agency NASA will design a new Earth System Observatory that will be dedicated to study climate change and mitigate its effects.
“NASA will design a new set of Earth-focused missions to provide key information to guide efforts related to climate change, disaster mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real-time agricultural processes. With the Earth System Observatory, each satellite will be uniquely designed to complement the others, working in tandem to create a 3D, holistic view of Earth, from bedrock to atmosphere,” the agency said in a press release on Monday.
NASA is currently initiating the formulation phase for the observatory. “Among its first integrated parts is NASA’s partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which brings together two different kinds of radar systems that can measure changes in Earth’s surface less than a half-inch. This capability will be utilized in one of the observatory’s first missions intended as a pathfinder, called NISAR (NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture radar),” NASA added.
This mission will measure some of the planet’s most complex processes such as ice-sheet collapse and natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides.
“NISAR can assist planners and decision makers with managing both hazards and natural resources in the future,” said the premier space agency.
