Oct 18 1999
From The Space Library
NASA released its newest and most accurate map of the continent of Antarctica, created from data that the Canadian Space Agency's (CSA's) RADARSAT-1 satellite had collected over an 18-day period during the spring of 1997. Vexel Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, had developed software to generate a mosaic of the continent from "many small images made from different angles and orientations of the satellite." Project officials and scientists remarked that the most important discoveries resulting from the radar images concerned the network of ice streams; the new satellite data revealed that the streams traveled "enormous distances at speeds up to 3,000 feet (914 meters) per year-100 times faster than the flow of surrounding ice." The CSA had begun planning RADARSAT in 1980, because of Canada's interest in using a high-resolution radar satellite to monitor shipping channels in the Arctic. NASA's negotiations with the CSA had resulted in an agreement: NASA would launch the satellite and provide software and data analysis in exchange for access to some of the data the satellite produced. Additionally, the CSA would make at least two imaging scans of Antarctica. RADARSAT had launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 4 November 1995, but, until 1997, Canadian controllers had not completed a difficult rotation of the satellite, necessary to place Antarctica in full view. Once correctly oriented, RADARSAT had been able to complete the imaging in 18 days because it could collect data anytime of the day or night and in any weather. The last satellite map of Antarctica had used images from five different satellites, spanning the years 1980 to 1994.
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