Exploring a New Approach for Measuring Water Vapor on Earth and Mars
PROJECT Vapor Inside-cloud Profiling Radar (VIPR) and WAter Sounding Short-range Radar (WASSR) SNAPSHOT NASA researchers are exploring a new radar-based method to map water vapor both in Earth’s atmosphere and near the surface of Mars. Some members of the VIPR/WASSR team preparing to test a VIPR from an aircraft (from left to right: Jose Siles, Richard Roy, Luis Millán, and Ken Cooper). Mapping water vapor is a crosscutting theme of NASA science investigations across the solar system. Engineers and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are exploring a new radar-based remote sensing approach for measuring absolute humidity, both in Earth’s atmosphere from an aircraft and near the surface of Mars on a future rover platform. This technique relies on the frequency dependence of a radar beam’s propagation when tuned near one of the water molecule’s absorption resonances. The strongest of these resonances occur at extremely high frequencies, beyond the reach of traditional radar technology....