https://www.rocketlabusa.com/
https://www.capellaspace.com/
Catchy title, right? “I can’t believe it’s not optical” refers to a space flight mission that Rocket Lab conducted for Capella Space, a company that collects earth observation data via microsatellites. Capella Space uses a technology called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology to capture amazing image data of the earth from space. Below are some interesting images that they captured
These images were not taken with your traditional optical camera, but using radio waves - fascinating isn’t it.
I mentioned something “Synthetic Aperture Radar” - that’s quite a mouthful and I’ll need to unpack it. That is actually the motivation behind this post. Back in 2022, as part of the final requirements to graduate with my Bachelors degree, I had to complete a research project. My research project was based on Radar technology and involved evaluating the effectiveness a certain radar system as an educational tool. I wrote a full report about it, which you can read here.
https://github.com/samuelmbiya/Evaluating-the-MIT-S-band-radar-as-an-educational-tool
In a few sentences, the goal of the project was to
I made use range and doppler measurement capabilities to measure target range and speed. These are common measurements that Radars can capture. In addition to that I also used the Radar for ISAR imagery - this is something that the
I learnt a lot about Radar technology, systems engineering and electronics and wanted to share that with others