Recent earthquakes in Alaska and around the world have shown us how violently Earth can sometimes move under our feet. In July 2025, NASA, in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organization, launched the NASA/ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, which will enable us to monitor such events with unprecedented accuracy, helping us better understand many of the natural hazards that affect Alaskans daily.

NISAR will revolutionize how we monitor Earth. It monitors volcanoes, glaciers, sea ice, forests, and seismic zones independent of weather and daylight conditions. NISAR’s instruments will be able to measure movements of Earth down to a centimeter, an incredible feat for a platform orbiting more than 800 kilometers away. NISAR will collect more free and open data than NASA currently holds in all of its archives.

In addition to an overview of NISAR itself, this talk will also highlight Alaska’s important role in this mission. Working closely with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center (ASF DAAC) downlinks, archives, and distributes NISAR’s data to an international audience of scientists and decision makers, all from Alaska.