What is radar interferometry?
If you want to think of that in simplistic terms, we’re trying to get a 3D image of the Earth to build a three-dimensional topographic view of the Earth. How we will do that is we have one big radar in the payload bay and then we have two antennas; the one in the payload bay and one that’s on a boom 200 feet away. By getting these two images returned from the radar, we’ll be able to infer, to get a 3D-type image. Sort of like using two eyes to get depth perception. Why is this flight important? Is there really more to be learned about the surface of the Earth? One of the things I found fairly fascinating when I was assigned to this mission is that we’ve got a better 3D map of Venus and Mars than we do of the Earth. To the accuracy that we’re looking at, which is about 30 meters, we right now only have about 3 to 5 percent of the Earth mapped to this kind of accuracy. Of course, we’ve been trying to map the Earth for ages and we’re just trying to do it a little bit better on this missio
