Synthetic aperture radar

Follow Synthetic aperture radar on Notably News to receive short updates to your email — rarely!

We include updates on General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, Cassini–Huygens, TAI Anka-3, TAI Anka, DF-21, Chandrayaan-2, DF-26, Chandrayaan-1, General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Selex ES Falco, AN/APG-68, Sentinel-1, COSMO-SkyMed ... and more.

November 11 2024	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 orbiter conducted another collision avoidance manoeuvre to prevent a potential conjunction with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
May 2024	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter observed the Sun during a massive solar flare using XSM and CLASS instruments, in conjunction with XpoSAT & Aditya-L1.
October 2023	Chandrayaan-2 The orbiter discovered an abundance of sodium on the Moon, revealing a sodium tail thousands of kilometers long, mapped using the Large Area X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS).
August 23 2023	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 performed a soft landing on the Moon, marking a significant milestone in India's lunar exploration program.
August 23 2023	Chandrayaan-1 Chandrayaan-3 successfully performed a soft landing on the Moon, marking a significant achievement in India's lunar exploration program.
July 14 2023	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-3 was launched, designed as a second attempt to demonstrate lunar landing capabilities for the future Lunar Polar Exploration Mission with Japan.
July 14 2023	Chandrayaan-1 Chandrayaan-3 mission launched as a follow-up to previous lunar missions.
August 2022	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 detected water and hydroxyl ions on the Moon between 29 and 62 degrees north latitude, with higher concentrations in sunlit regions, using the Imaging Infrared Spectrometer (IIRS).
October 18 2021	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 orbiter performed a collision avoidance manoeuvre at 14:52 UTC to prevent a potential conjunction with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
2019	Göktürk-3 Planned launch of the Göktürk-3 satellite by the end of the year, as announced by the Undersecretariate of Ministry of National Defence.
December 2019	Chandrayaan-2 ISRO requested initial project funding, with K. Sivan stating the mission's cost would be around a specific amount (though the exact figure is incomplete in the provided text).
December 12 2019	RISAT-2BR1 RISAT-2BR1 deployed its 3.6 meter antenna at 08:30 UTC.
December 11 2019	RISAT-2BR1 RISAT-2BR1, an Indian synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellite, was launched at 09:55 UTC aboard Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C48 from the First Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre. This launch marked the 50th mission of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the 75th launch from the space centre.
November 2019	Chandrayaan-2 ISRO officials announced they were studying and preparing a new lunar lander mission, which would eventually become Chandrayaan-3.
November 16 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Failure Analysis Committee released its official report to the Space Commission, concluding that a software glitch caused the Vikram lander's crash.
November 10 2019	Chandrayaan-2 LRO conducted a third flyover of the landing site.
October 14 2019	Chandrayaan-2 LRO performed a second flyover under more favorable lighting conditions but was unable to locate the Vikram lander.
September 26 2019	Chandrayaan-2 NASA released LRO images showing no sight of the Vikram lander, confirming the unsuccessful landing attempt.
September 17 2019	Chandrayaan-2 NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) flew over the intended landing zone, attempting to locate the Vikram lander under poor lighting conditions.
September 7 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Planned Pragyan rover deployment was canceled due to lander failure, preventing rover deployment.
September 6 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lunar lander attempted a lunar landing but crashed due to a software error, resulting in mission failure for the landing component.
September 6 2019	Chandrayaan-2 During the landing phase, the lander deviated from its intended trajectory and crashed. ISRO chairman K. Sivan confirmed a 'hard landing' caused by a software glitch.
September 2 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander was separated from the orbiter at 07:45 UTC.
September 1 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Spacecraft's elliptical lunar orbit was modified to become nearly circular after four orbit-lowering manoeuvres.
August 20 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft successfully reached lunar orbit, positioning itself for the planned lunar landing mission.
August 13 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Trans-lunar injection performed, setting course for the Moon with a burn time of 1203 seconds.
August 13 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Spacecraft completed trans-lunar injection after a 22-day geocentric phase involving multiple orbit-raising maneuvers, progressively increasing its orbit from an initial 45,475 × 169 km to a highly eccentric orbit of 142,975 × 276 km.
August 3 2019	Chandrayaan-2 The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft captured its first set of Earth images using the LI4 camera on the Vikram lander, showing the North American landmass.
July 22 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Immediately after launch, multiple observations were made of a slow-moving bright object over Australia, potentially related to upper stage venting of residual liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant.
July 22 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh at 09:13:12 UTC using a LVM3-M1 rocket, marking the mission's start of its lunar exploration journey.
July 22 2019	Chandrayaan-1 Chandrayaan-2 mission launched, including a lunar orbiter, the Vikram lander, and Pragyan rover. However, the lander experienced a software glitch and crashed during landing.
July 14 2019	Chandrayaan-2 Initial launch of Chandrayaan-2 was aborted 56 minutes and 24 seconds before scheduled time due to an unconfirmed technical glitch, potentially involving a leak in the helium gas bottle nipple joint.
2018	Chandrayaan-1 Scientists announced the re-analysis of M3 infrared data, confirming the existence of water across wide expanses of the Moon's polar regions based on data originally collected during the Chandrayaan-1 mission.
June 2013	Synthetic-aperture radar Alaska Satellite Facility released newly processed 35-year-old Seasat SAR (Synthetic-Aperture Radar) imagery, providing historical satellite data to the scientific community.
May 8 2013	Göktürk-3 Contract signed between Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (SSM) to initiate the indigenous design of the Göktürk-3 satellite and ground stations.
January 2013	Chandrayaan-2 Mission was postponed and rescheduled to 2016 due to Russia's inability to develop the lander on time.

This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles Chandrayaan-1, History of synthetic-aperture radar, Spaceborne Imaging Radar, RISAT-2BR1, Göktürk-3 & Chandrayaan-2, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.