NASA-ISRO Radar Mission Peers Through Clouds to See Mississippi River Delta

A new image from the NISAR mission shows off the satellite’s ability to reveal details of Earth’s surfaces. The science team also released new sample data. 

A U.S.-Indian Earth satellite’s ability to see through clouds, revealing insights and characteristics of our planet’s surface, is on display in a colorful, newly released image showing the Mississippi River Delta region in southeastern Louisiana. 

Created with data collected by the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite in late fall, the image shows the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and a diversity of wetlands, farmland, forests, and communities. It also highlights the key difference between radar, which scans surfaces with microwaves, and technologies that sense visible light: Optical imagery from other instruments taken the same day showed the region largely obscured by clouds. 

This image comes as the NISAR project prepares to make thousands of mission data files available for download in late February. The mission also recently released a smaller set of sample files to help data users prepare to utilize the broader dataset. 

While the Earth-observing satellite went through checks to verify the health of all its systems after launching in July, the mission’s NASA science team — researchers and data scientists from a range of disciplines spread around the U.S. — pulled preliminary measurements from its L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument to generate maps such as this one that demonstrate the instrument’s capabilities.  

Built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the L-band radar employs microwaves that, due to their 9-inch (24-centimeter) wavelength, can pass uninterrupted through clouds and image the surface below clearly.  

What’s revealed 

Captured Nov. 29, the image demonstrates how the L-band SAR can discern what type of land cover — low-lying vegetation, trees, and human structures — is present in each area. This capability is vital both for monitoring the gain and loss of forest and wetland ecosystems, as well as for tracking the progress of crops through growing seasons around the world. 

The colors seen here represent varying types of cover, which tend to reflect microwaves back to the satellite differently. Portions of New Orleans appear green, a sign that the radar’s signals may be scattering from buildings that are oriented at different angles relative to the satellite’s orbit. Parts of the city appear magenta where streets that run parallel to the satellite’s flight track cause the signals to bounce strongly and brightly off buildings and back to the instrument. 

The resolution of the image is fine enough to make clear, right of center, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway — twin bridges that, at nearly 24 miles (39 kilometers) in length, make up the world’s longest continuous bridge over water. 

The bright green areas to the west of the Mississippi River, which snakes from Baton Rouge in the upper left to New Orleans in the lower right, are healthy forests. There, tree canopies and other vegetation caused NISAR’s microwaves to bounce in many directions before returning to the satellite. Meanwhile, the yellow-and-magenta-speckled hues of Maurepas Swamp, directly west of Lake Pontchartrain and the smaller Lake Maurepas, indicate that the tree populations in that wetland forest ecosystem have thinned.  

On either bank of the Mississippi, the image shows parcels of varying shapes, sizes, and cover. Darker areas suggest fallow farm plots, while bright magenta indicates that tall plants, such as crops, may be present. 

The data products created with NISAR’s L-band measurements will be downloadable at the website of the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center. The Fairbanks-based facility stores and distributes NASA’s SAR data.  

Insights from NISAR can protect communities by providing unique, actionable information to decision-makers in a diverse range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management. 

More about NISAR 

A joint mission developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NISAR launched on July 30 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast. Managed by Caltech, JPL leads the U.S. component of the project and provided the satellite’s L-band SAR and antenna reflector. ISRO provided NISAR’s spacecraft bus and its S-band SAR, which operates at a wavelength of 4 inches (10 centimeters.) 

The NISAR satellite is the first to carry two SAR instruments at different wavelengths and will monitor Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, collecting data using the spacecraft’s giant drum-shaped reflector, which measures 39 feet (12 meters) wide — the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has ever sent into space. 

To learn more about NISAR, visit: 

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/

News Media Contacts

Andrew Wang / Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-393-2433
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

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I Am Artemis: Doug Parkinson

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I Am Artemis: Doug Parkinson

Doug Parkinson’s face lights up as he starts telling his story, how someone from  Wisconsin now plays a part in the team that will help land the first Artemis astronauts on to the Moon.

Parkinson serves as NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket lead for Launch Integration and Mission Operations, guiding engineers responsible for monitoring the rocket during testing, pre-launch, and launch activities.

Following his father’s footsteps, Parkinson became a mechanical engineer, studying at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He had planned on working in computer technologies or on cars in his future. Then the opportunity appeared to work with higher-powered engines.

“I came across an opportunity to work at the Propulsion Research Center at the university. I studied new propulsion technologies. That intrigued me because, as an undergrad, it was a chance to put into practical use what I was learning in the books and in theory,” said Parkinson. “It ended up being a lot of fun and very educational. It was in cutting edge technologies that really inspired me.”

Joining NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1999, he began helping develop advanced liquid rocket engines, including the Fastrac and J-2X engines. The J-2X was an advanced development of the upper stage engine used on the Saturn V.

“In 2012, I moved to SLS. One of the things I learned in the propulsion area with all the engine testing was test operations. That translated well into my new role as operations lead for the stages element,” said Parkinson.

Now, he also serves as one of the SLS Engineering Support Center managers, helping oversee and train the SLS Engineering Support Team responsible for monitoring the rocket’s systems. The team operates at NASA Marshall and is critical to verifying the rocket is performing well.

Parkinson is the first person to hold the Launch Integration and Mission Operations leadership position in the SLS Program.

“I love all aspects of the operations. I like getting my hands dirty. I like seeing the erector set go together,” said Parkinson.

When the Artemis II astronauts fly by the Moon, soaring within just a few thousand miles of the lunar surface, they will do so having been launched on a rocket Parkinson helped develop.

I have goosebumps just thinking about it,” he said. “I’ll be on console for part of that time, listening to what they have to say. It’s amazing to think we’re going to go do that.

Doug Parkinson

Launch Integration and Mission Operations Lead for the SLS (Space Launch System) Program

“I have goosebumps just thinking about it,” he said. “I’ll be on console for part of that time, listening to what they have to say. It’s amazing to think we’re going to go do that.”

The SLS rocket will launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft to carry four astronauts around the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to lay the groundwork for the first human mission to Mars.

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March 2026 Total Lunar Eclipse: Your Questions Answered

A total lunar eclipse will redden the Moon on March 3, 2026. Here’s what you need to know. 

How does a lunar eclipse work?

A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth passes directly between the Sun and Moon, casting a gigantic shadow across the lunar surface and turning the Moon a deep reddish-orange. This alignment can only occur during a full Moon phase.

How can I observe the eclipse?

You can observe a lunar eclipse without any special equipment. All you need is a line of sight to the Moon! For a more dramatic observing experience, seek a dark environment away from bright lights. Binoculars or a telescope can also enhance your view. 

On March 3, totality will be visible in the evening from eastern Asia and Australia, throughout the night in the Pacific, and in the early morning in North and Central America and far western South America. The eclipse is partial in central Asia and much of South America. No eclipse is visible in Africa or Europe.

What can I expect to see?

Why is a lunar eclipse sometimes called a “blood Moon”?

During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon appears dark red or orange. This is because our planet blocks most of the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon, and the light that does reach the lunar surface is filtered through a thick slice of Earth’s atmosphere. It’s as if all of the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the Moon. 

Learn more: Why does the Moon turn red during a solar eclipse?

What else can I observe on the night of the eclipse?

As Earth’s shadow dims the lunar surface, constellations may be easier to spot than they usually are during a full Moon. At the time of the eclipse, the Moon will be in the constellation Leo, under the lion’s hind paws. 

Several days later, on March 8, look for a “conjunction” of Venus and Saturn: from our perspective on Earth, these two planets will appear close to each other in the sky (though they’ll still be very distant from each other in space).

Visit our What’s Up guide for more skywatching tips, and find lunar observing recommendations for each day of the year in our Daily Moon Guide.

Caela Barry / Ernie Wright

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

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NASA Analysis Shows La Niña Limited Sea Level Rise in 2025

A mild La Niña caused greater rainfall over the Amazon basin, which offset rising sea levels due to record warming of Earth’s oceans.

The rise in the global mean sea level slowed in 2025 relative to the year before, an effect largely due to the La Niña conditions that persisted over most of the year. According to a NASA analysis, the average height of the ocean increased last year by 0.03 inches (0.08 centimeters), down from 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) in 2024.

The 2025 figure also fell below the long-term expected rate of 0.17 inches (0.44 centimeters) per year based on the rate of rise since the early 1990s. Though sea levels have increasingly trended upward in that period, years during which the rise in the average height was less usually have occurred during La Niñas — the part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle that cools the eastern Pacific Ocean, often leading to heavy rainfall over the equatorial portions of South America.

The current La Niña has been relatively mild. Even so, the extra precipitation it has poured on the Amazon River basin contributed to an overall shift of water from oceans to land. This effect tends to temporarily lower sea levels, offsetting the rise caused by melting glaciers and ice sheets and warming of the oceans, which raises sea levels through the expansion of water when the temperature increases. The net result in 2025 was a lower-than-average sea level rise.

“The weather gives us a wild ride, and what we saw with sea level rise last year is part of that ride,” said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But that cycle is short-lived. The extra water in the Amazon is going to reach the oceans in less than a year, and rapid rise will soon return.”

Combined effects

To calculate the global mean sea level in 2025, scientists averaged data across space and time from Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, the current official reference satellite for sea level measurements and one of a line of missions developed by NASA and its U.S. and European partners to track the height of about 90% of Earth’s oceans every 10 days.

Then, to better understand the factors that contributed to the rise last year, the researchers looked at measurements from other sources. Among them was the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO), a twin-satellite mission launched by NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences that tracks the movement of water (liquid and frozen) by measuring changes in Earth’s gravity over land and ice masses.

The GRACE data indicated that even as ice loss from glaciers and ice sheets continued a long-term trend of water moving from land to oceans, an outsize amount of water moved in the opposite direction in 2025: The heavier-than-normal rainfall due to La Niña shifted water from the oceans to the Amazon basin.

Meanwhile, data from Argo, an international program that uses thousands of seaborne probes to measure ocean temperatures and salinity, showed record warming of the oceans in 2025.

The combined effect of the two factors — one tending to lower sea levels and the other tending to increase them — resulted in an average rise in sea level in 2025 that was less than the average rate based on the long-term data record.

Actionable, accurate, consistent

The continuous series of ocean-observing satellites started with TOPEX/Poseidon, which launched in 1992. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, launched in 2020 and took over in 2022 from its predecessor, Jason-3, which is still in orbit and celebrated its 10^th launch anniversary on Jan. 17.

In coming months, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will pass the baton to its twin, Sentinel-6B, which launched in November. Sentinel-6B is expected to continue ocean measurements for at least five years.

Over more than three decades, the satellites have offered actionable, accurate, and consistent measurements at both local and global scales. These measurements have formed the basis for U.S. flood predictions, which are crucial for safeguarding coastal infrastructure and communities.

The dataset indicates that the average global sea level has gone up by 4 inches (10 centimeters) since 1993. While it’s not uncommon to see short-term ups and downs, the overall trend shows that the rate of annual sea level rise has more than doubled.

“As seas continue to rise globally, satellite monitoring empowers communities worldwide to anticipate risks and build resilience,” said Nadya Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Learn more about sea level:

https://sealevel.nasa.gov

News Media Contacts

Andrew Wang / Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-393-2433
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA Researchers Probe Tangled Magnetospheres of Merging Neutron Stars

New simulations performed on a NASA supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the maelstrom of interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars’ final moments that may be detectable by future observatories.  

“Just before neutron stars crash, the highly magnetized, plasma-filled regions around them, called magnetospheres, start to interact strongly. We studied the last several orbits before the merger, when the entwined magnetic fields undergo rapid and dramatic changes, and modeled potentially observable high-energy signals,” said lead scientist Dimitrios Skiathas, a graduate student at the University of Patras, Greece, who is conducting research for the Southeastern Universities Research Association in Washington at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

A paper describing the findings published Nov. 20, 2025, in the The Astrophysical Journal.

Neutron star mergers produce a particular type of GRB (gamma-ray burst), the most powerful class of explosions in the cosmos.

Most investigations have naturally concentrated on the spectacular mergers and their aftermaths, which produce near-light-speed jets that emit gamma rays, ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, and a so-called kilonova explosion that forges heavy elements like gold and platinum. A merger observed in 2017 dramatically confirmed the long-predicted connections between these phenomena — and remains the only event seen so far to exhibit all three.

Neutron stars pack more mass than our Sun into a ball about 15 miles (24 kilometers) across, roughly the length of Manhattan Island in New York City. They form when the core of a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses, crushing the core and triggering a supernova explosion that blasts away the rest of the star. The collapse also revs up the core’s rotation and amplifies its magnetic field.

Newborn neutron stars can spin dozens of times a second and wield some of the strongest magnetic fields known, up to 10 trillion times stronger than a refrigerator magnet. That’s strong enough to directly transform gamma-rays into electrons and positrons and rapidly accelerate them to energies far beyond anything achievable in particle accelerators on Earth. 

“In our simulations, the magnetosphere behaves like a magnetic circuit that continually rewires itself as the stars orbit. Field lines connect, break, and reconnect while currents surge through plasma moving at nearly the speed of light, and the rapidly varying fields can accelerate particles,” said co-author Constantinos Kalapotharakos at NASA Goddard. “Following that nonlinear evolution at high resolution is exactly why we need a supercomputer!”

Using the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the team ran more than 100 simulations of a system of two orbiting neutron stars, each with 1.4 solar masses. The goal was to explore how different magnetic field configurations affected the way electromagnetic energy — light in all of its forms — left the binary system. Most of the simulations describe the last 7.7 milliseconds before the merger, enabling a detailed study of the final orbits.

“Our work shows that the light emitted by these systems varies greatly in brightness and is not distributed evenly, so a far-away observer’s perspective on the merger matters a great deal,” said co-author Zorawar Wadiasingh at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard. “The signals also get much stronger as the stars get closer and closer in a way that depends on the relative magnetic orientations of the neutron stars.”

Magnetic field lines anchored to the surfaces of each star sweep behind them as the stars orbit. Field lines may directly connect one star to the other as the orbits shrink, while lines already linking the stars may break and reconfigure.

Using the simulations, the team also computed electromagnetic forces acting on the stars’ surfaces. While the effects of gravity dominate, these magnetic stresses could accumulate in strongly magnetized systems. Future models may help reveal how magnetic interactions influence the last moments of the merger.

“Such behavior could be imprinted on gravitational wave signals that would be detectable in next-generation facilities. One value of studies like this is to help us figure out what future observatories might be able to see and should be looking for in both gravitational waves and light,” said Goddard’s Demosthenes Kazanas.

The team, which includes Alice Harding at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Paul Kolbeck at the University of Washington in Seattle, then used the simulated fields to identify where the highest-energy emission would be produced and how it would propagate.

In the chaotic plasma surrounding the neutron stars, particles transform into radiation and vice versa. Speedy electrons emit gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, through a process called curvature radiation. A gamma-ray photon can interact with a strong magnetic field in a way that transforms it into a pair of particles, an electron and a positron.

The study found regions producing gamma rays with energies trillions of times greater than that of visible light, but likely none of it could escape. The highest-energy gamma rays quickly converted to particles in the presence of powerful magnetic fields. However, gamma rays at lower energies, with millions of times the energy of visible light, can exit the merging system, and the resulting particles may also radiate at still lower energies, including X-rays.

The finding suggests that future medium-energy gamma-ray space telescopes, especially those with wide fields of view, may detect signals originating in the runup to the merger if gravitational-wave observatories can provide timely alerts and sky localization. Today, ground-based gravitational-wave observatories, such as LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in Louisiana and Washington, and Virgo in Italy, detect neutron star mergers with frequencies between 10 and 1,000 hertz and can enable rapid electromagnetic follow-up.

ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA are collaborating on a space-based gravitational-wave observatory named LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), planned for launch in the 2030s. LISA will observe neutron-star binaries much earlier in their evolution at far lower gravitational-wave frequencies than ground-based observatories, typically long before they merge.

Future gravitational-wave observatories will be able to alert astronomers to systems on the verge of merging. Once such systems are found, wide-field gamma-ray and X-ray observatories could begin searching for the pre-merger emission highlighted by these simulations.

Routine observation of events like these using two different “messengers” — light and gravitational waves — will provide a major leap forward in understanding this class of GRBs, and NASA researchers are helping to lead the way.

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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