Associate Professor Narendra N. Das of the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering departments has been selected as a Science Team member of the prestigious NISAR mission of NASA.

This NASA mission is in developmental stage and is scheduled to be launched in January 2024. Dr. Das has expertise in hydrology and microwave remote sensing and its geophysical applications.

As a ST member his prime responsibility is to create an algorithm to generate high-resolution (200 m) soil moisture from the NISAR observations at a global extent. Dr. Das’ Remote Sensing in Hydrology and Agriculture lab in Farrall Hall is also greatly contributing towards this effort by creating algorithm software and ancillary data for the NASA NISAR mission. Such high-resolution soil moisture data has tremendous applications in agriculture, watershed management, forest fire prediction, drought monitoring, flood inundation mapping, etc.

This effort by Dr. Das and his research group will lead to many high-value publications and the development of know-how and skills at MSU. 

This article is adapted from a publication released by the College of Engineering.