Reaching Out and Touching our Solar System

Alaska’s IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society is announcing an upcoming lecture of its
Luncheon Lecture Series on:

“Remote Sensing of the Last Frontier”

The luncheon will be hosted at the

Fairbanks Princess Riverside Lodge, 4477 Pikes Landing Road, Fairbanks, AK

on

Friday October 5, 2012 from 11:30am – 1pm

featuring a talk by

Dr. Paul A Rosen, Section Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

“Reaching Out and Touching our Solar System – Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Radar Program for Earth and Planetary Exploration”

Unlike passive instruments such as radiometers or optical imagers, radars carry their own source of illumination and measure the scattered energy from an object or surface; in a sense reaching out and touching it.  With control over various system parameters, radars can be designed to measure a broad variety of geophysical phenomena relating to oceans, atmospheres, land cover, and ice sheets. For over 40 years, the Radar Science & Engineering Section at Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been designing and building radar missions to probe the planets and better understand our changing Earth.

Alaska has some of the richest and most challenging terrain for remote sensing, from steep and glaciated mountains to fast-changing coastal dynamics and varied ecosystems in between.  So naturally, JPL has favored Alaska as a natural laboratory for many of its airborne and spaceborne campaigns, and has worked closely with research institutions in the state, most notably the Alaska Satellite Facility and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

This talk will present an overview of the radar program at JPL, and will highlight some of the advances in technologies and techniques that have led to breakthrough measurements and discoveries in understanding our solar system.