Geologists are using radar images and photographs taken during NASA's
most recent Space Shuttle mission to study possible new lava flows from
Mount Kliuchevskoi on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula.
"The Endeavour astronauts were among the first witnesses to the
eruption, which began only eight hours after the launch on Sept. 30,"
said Dr. Jeffrey J. Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA "The crew tracked the progress of the eruption daily,
providing us with the most detailed documentation of a large eruption
ever obtained from orbit."
Plaut will discuss the dramatic radar imagery of the area in a
presentation today to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of
America in Seattle, Wash. Plaut is the geology experiment
representative for the Spaceborne Imaging Radar C/X-Band Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR), the international radar system carried
into orbit for 11 days by the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Plaut will
compare the radar data to the optical photographs of the massive
eruption that were taken by the astronaut crew.
The eruption of Mt. Kliuchevskoi is only one of several volcanoes
being studied by the SIR-C/X-SAR team. The radar detected evidence of
recent activity at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines and the Rabaul
Caldera in Papua, New Guinea. Scientists hope to use such data to
assist local authorities in identifying and mitigating hazards posed
by these dangerous volcanoes, Plaut said.
"Radar images also were acquired for dozens of volcanoes around the
world, including 12 of the 15 volcanoes identified by the
international volcanology community as deserving special study due the
threats posed to large local populations," Plaut said.
SIR-C/X-SAR, launched Sept. 30, is a joint mission of the U.S., German
and Italian space agencies. It is part of NASA's Mission to Planet
Earth, a long-term, coordinated program to study the Earth's global
environment, to observe environmental changes and to learn how human
beings affect those changes. JPL manages the SIR-C portion of the
mission for NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth.
NOTE: An comparison image of the optical and radar views of Mt.
Kliuchevskoi is available on JPL's Internet public access site. FTP at
jplinfo.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.jpl.nasa.gov.
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