EARTH OBSERVATION
A radar that measures the ground moving by a centimetre — through cloud, in the dark.
NISAR, a joint NASA-ISRO satellite, launched July 30, 2025 and is the first spacecraft to carry two synthetic-aperture radars at once — an L-band and an S-band. From more than 800 km up it can detect surface movement down to about a centimetre, day or night, regardless of weather.
That makes it a near-real-time watch on volcanoes, earthquakes, glaciers, sea ice and forests. In February 2026 the mission released over 100,000 L-band data products through the Alaska Satellite Facility, opening the firehose to anyone. Science layers from missions like this are exactly what feed the overlays on the map above.