Overview
- NASA and ISRO released an L‑band radar image nicknamed the “hummingbird” that depicts Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja protruding through East Antarctica’s ice and bright streaks of crevasses.
- The image was acquired in August 2025 and published publicly in mid‑July 2026, one year after NISAR’s July 30, 2025 launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
- NISAR combines NASA’s L‑band and ISRO’s S‑band synthetic aperture radars to see both surface features and signals that penetrate snow and shallow ice, with color coding showing surface, volume and mixed scattering.
- Mission teams have begun releasing NISAR data through the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center so researchers can download time series for ongoing monitoring of glacier structure and movement.
- Scientists say the image is more than eye‑catching: it lets analysts map hidden ice fractures and stress patterns that inform ice‑flow models and assessments of future sea‑level contribution.