Internal view of NISAR's integrated L-SAR and S-SAR instruments at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NISAR’s radar instrument structure (RIS) is shown in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

This internal view of the RIS houses instrument subsystems including the L-band (24 cm wavelength) and S-band (12 cm wavelength) synthetic aperture radars.

NISAR is the first satellite mission to collect radar data in two microwave bandwidth regions, called the L-band and the S-band, to measure changes in our planet's surface less than a centimeter across. This allows the mission to observe a wide range of Earth processes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes.