This is an image of the Bolivian capital city of La Paz that was created using three radar frequencies. La Paz sits at the edge of the Altiplano, the high inland plateau between the Cordillera Occidental and Cordillera Oriental belts of the Andes Mountains in South America. Part of the Cordillera Oriental mountains are seen on the right side (northeast) of this image. The bright areas at the top of the mountains are most likely the result of year-round snow cover. Glacier-carved valleys drain the mountain areas. The dark lines left of center are Kennedy Airport near the northwestern part of the city. The image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on April 18, 1994. The image is centered at 16.25 degrees south latitude, 68.1 degrees west longitude. The area shown is approximately 35 kilometers by 16 kilometers (22 miles by 10 miles). North is toward the upper right. Colors are assigned to different frequencies and polarizations of the radar as follows: red is L-band horizontally transmitted, horizontally received; green is C-band horizontally transmitted, vertically received; and blue is X-band vertically transmitted, vertically received. SIR-C/X-SAR, a joint mission of the German, Italian and United States space agencies, is part of NASA's program called Mission to Planet Earth.
P-46447 November 30, 1995
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Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. The radars illuminate Earth with microwaves allowing detailed observations at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR uses three microwave wavelengths: L-band (24 cm), C-band (6 cm) and X-band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the international scientific community to better understand the global environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented by aircraft and ground studies, will give scientists clearer insights into those environmental changes which are caused by nature and those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. X-SAR was developed by the Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space agency, Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), with the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft und Raumfahrt e.v.(DLR), the major partner in science, operations, and data processing of X-SAR.