NASA says it will study the earthquake faults in the region of Haiti using a jet equipped with an airborne radar system.
A NASA Gulfstream III jet along with the radar equipment aboard left the Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert on Monday and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Tuesday.
The instrument, called the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is planned to the installed on pilotless drone aircraft, but is being demonstrated on a conventional jet for this mission.
The overflights of Hispaniola, the island where Haiti also the Dominican Republic are located, were added to a formerly scheduled 3-week radar mission to Central America.
NASA added the mission to Haiti along with the Dominican Republic after the 7.0-magnitude quake that devastated Haiti on January 12.
"UAVSAR will permit us to image deformations of Earth's surface and other changes associated with post-Haiti earthquake geologic processes, such as aftershocks, earthquakes that may be triggered by the main earthquake farther down the fault line, and the potential for landslides," said JPL's Mr. Paul Lundgren, the principal investigator for the Hispaniola mission.
The island lies over a complex system of faults, counting the boundary between the small Caribbean plate and the enormous North American plate, which covers the entire of North America, Greenland, and some parts of Russia, Japan and Iceland.
JPL has been using the radar system ever since November to study California's geologic fault lines.
The mission toward Central America will also study the structure of tropical forests, monitor volcanoes and inspect Mayan archeology sites.
The UAVSAR, located in the jet's tummy, sends pulses of microwave energy to the ground from an altitude of 12,500 m to measure tiny changes in the Earth's surface, caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides or else the movements of glaciers.
A NASA Gulfstream III jet along with the radar equipment aboard left the Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert on Monday and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Tuesday.
The instrument, called the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is planned to the installed on pilotless drone aircraft, but is being demonstrated on a conventional jet for this mission.
The overflights of Hispaniola, the island where Haiti also the Dominican Republic are located, were added to a formerly scheduled 3-week radar mission to Central America.
NASA added the mission to Haiti along with the Dominican Republic after the 7.0-magnitude quake that devastated Haiti on January 12.
"UAVSAR will permit us to image deformations of Earth's surface and other changes associated with post-Haiti earthquake geologic processes, such as aftershocks, earthquakes that may be triggered by the main earthquake farther down the fault line, and the potential for landslides," said JPL's Mr. Paul Lundgren, the principal investigator for the Hispaniola mission.
The island lies over a complex system of faults, counting the boundary between the small Caribbean plate and the enormous North American plate, which covers the entire of North America, Greenland, and some parts of Russia, Japan and Iceland.
JPL has been using the radar system ever since November to study California's geologic fault lines.
The mission toward Central America will also study the structure of tropical forests, monitor volcanoes and inspect Mayan archeology sites.
The UAVSAR, located in the jet's tummy, sends pulses of microwave energy to the ground from an altitude of 12,500 m to measure tiny changes in the Earth's surface, caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides or else the movements of glaciers.
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