Hey everyone,
I am writing this from the comforts of Detroit Metropolitan Airport. I realized in my previous blog that I never mentioned what I am doing after a week in Houston. After Houston, I will be flying to Baltimore to work with the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Miniature-Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) science team at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Working with the team will help me better understand planetary radar research, and how the data is collected by planetary orbiting platforms. I have worked with radar data collected from airplanes and satellites from Earth, but I am not extremely familiar with planetary radar data. I have processed data and images from the Planetary Data System, but never really looked into how it is collected, and the steps required to convert raw data to calibrated data.
I was put in contact with Dr Wes Patterson in November to discuss the possibility of me visiting APL in February and work with the Mini-RF science team. I will be releasing more posts about APL closer to the 22nd of February so stay tuned :)
For anyone who is not familiar with what planetary radar images or radar images in general looks like, below are examples of data and images collected by the Mini-RF instrument.
Image credit: NASA. Artists rendition of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that carries the Mini-RF instrument.
Image credit: NASA. Mini-RF images of the north (top images) and south (bottom images) pole (70-90 degrees) of the Moon. The left images are radar brightness data, the brighter the image the rougher the surface. The right images are circular polarization ratio data, which tells you about the physical properties of the surface.