Welcome to the future location of
The Planetary Orbital Radar Processing and Simulation System

PORPASS will provide users with a web-application designed to facilitate custom processing and simulations of planetary radar data. The overarching goal of PORPASS is to enhance mission legacy by providing custom processing and simulation of planetary radar datasets beyond the life of any particular orbiting planetary science mission, ensuring data and code longevity and relevance as well as opening the door to the next generation of researchers.

Example SHARAD Radargram of Mars' North Polar Layered Deposits and surrounding terrain.

For this initial development, we focus our efforts on radar sounding data from SHARAD, MARSIS, and LRS.
  • MRO SHARAD
    The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Shallow Radar (SHARAD) has been collecting information on the surface and subsurface of Mars since late 2006. SHARAD emits a 10-watt chirped pulse downswept from 25 to 15 MHz, yielding a 15-meter range resolution in free-space.
  • MEx MARSIS
    The Mars Advanced Radar for Ionosphere and Subsurface Sounding (MARSIS) onboard the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express (MEx) spacecraft has been observing Mars since 2005. MARSIS operates in various modes, and the 1-MHz bands centered at 3, 4, and 5 MHz are used for subsurface sounding.
  • SELENE LRS
    The Selenological and Engineering Explore's (SELENE, AKA Kaguya) Lunar Radar Sounder (LRS) is a frequency-modulated / continous-wave radar sounder with a 2-MHz bandwidth centered at 5 MHz. LRS was in operation from 2007-2009.

Applications Under Development

PORPASS will feature two main software applications as well as a GIS-environment.

  • GRaSP
    The Generalized Radar Sounder Processor (GRaSP) is the heart of PORPASS. Most modern sounder systems rely on synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) processing to enhance along-track resolution and boost the effective signal-to-noise ratio. Despite the various difference in operations, all radar sounders operate under the same physics regime, therefore allowing one to design a generic processor for any radar sounder systems once the various differences between radar instruments have been accounted for.
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  • OaRS
    The Orbital Radar Simulator (OaRS) is an attempt to answer a long-standing issue in planetary radar sounder science, the lack of any publicly-available, open-source full-waveform radar simulator. Geophysics is a complementary science (i.e., single measurements cannot be used to infer subsurface properties). Because of this, many terrestrial and planetary geophysicist use numerical modeling to check their interpretations. Under development by members of the Center of Wave Phenomena at the Colorado School of Mines, OaRS will provide end-users with the ability to simulate radar data from various instrument through free-form subsurface environments.
  • PORPASS GIS
    To accompany the processing and simulation capabilities of PORPASS, we will develop an interative geographic information system (GIS) that will display radar ground-tracks over various basemaps. The GIS will allow users to select radar observations over regions-of-interest and select bulk processing parameters to ensure all data is being processed consistently in the selected dataset. At this time, both Mars and Earth's Moon will be accessible as basemaps through the GIS.

The PORPASS Team

The PORPASS Project is managed by Matthew R. Perry (PSI) on behalf of Principal Investigator (PI) Nathaniel Putzig (PSI). Other Investigators involved in the development of PORPASS include Megan B. Russell (PSI), Gareth Morgan (PSI), Frederick Foss (Freestyle Analytical and Quantitative Services, LLC), Paul Sava (Colorado School of Mines), Dylan Hickson (Colorado School of Mines), Bruce Campbell (Smithsonian Institution), and Andrew Kopf (US Naval Observatory).

Launch Date

PORPASS development began mid-2020 and is expected to be completed by Spring 2024. We will be hosting a User's Workshop at the 2024 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) where we will provide an overview of PORPASS, introduce the various tools available through the web-application, and show users how to use PORPASS as a valuable research tool.

PORPASS is hosted by:
The Planetary Science Institute
1700 East Fort Lowell, Suite 106
Tucson, AZ, 85719-2395, US
P: (520) 622-6300
Development Funded by:
NASA Planetary Data Archival, Restoration, and Tools (PDART) Program, grant number 80NSSC20K1057