Cass Crew

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IQ5ioQjvxNGykZXJvXo0ab_7-Dn-tFkl/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dv8e3-baSrprz8J0Pa1Mkv3fwPeJDg9o/view?usp=sharing

Our project explains to the general public the operation of Synthetic Aperture Radar technology and how it differs from standard radar technology. At the same time, our project has some general ideas translated into the local indigenous language of the Cherokee people. We want to be able to illustrate the importance of incorporating an indigenous language into a STEM related atmosphere so that the language can survive and can evolve with a STEM-centric society. Our project also gives significant details as to how this type of technology is used in everyday life including various uses in ecology which are of particular importance to the Appalachian region. The benefit of our project is that it could open doors for other indigenous tribes to also interact with STEM related topics in their native language as it would help their language grow. Another benefit of our project is being able to educate the general public on the importance of this technology. Our goal is to help people that have little knowledge of the subject and give them a better understanding of it, and secondly to create a pathway for indigenous languages across the country to interact with. For our tools we used Google Docs, Google Slides and a video editing software called Sony Vegas.

We used a variety of space agency data for our research. In order for us to truly understand Synthetic Aperture Radar, we felt that it was necessary to perform academic research from highly reputable sources. Primarily, we used the open source space agency data for graphs and SAR models as visual/educational representations in our final project video, as other sources of data seemed to conflate SAR images with purely optical images.

As a small team based from a community college nestled in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains, we were all given a unique opportunity to participate in the NASA Space Apps challenge upon suggestion by our physics professor and Smoky Mountain STEM Collaborative representative, Matthew Cass. Thus, “Cass Crew” was born, and we set out to pick a challenge that we felt played to our strengths and talents as individuals.

We picked the challenge “What on Earth is Synthetic Aperture Radar”, as we felt we had a range of talents in the realms of storytelling, video editing, and media design, but after closer inspection of the prompt we asked ourselves a question; what is our “own” language? As a team, all three of us were born and raised in the Appalachian mountains, and we have Cherokee ancestry within our team. What is our “own language”? What is the language of Appalachia?

Surely it was an impossible task to make such a video. Surely it would be impossible to define such complicated scientific terms in the Cherokee language. Despite this, we as a team felt obligated to give this far-fetched notion an honest try. As we only have one member amongst us that has a working grasp of the language, we reached out to several members in the Cherokee language community for help on this project. Unfortunately, out of the three members we had contact with, one of them said it was impossible, another one told us that it may be possible, but not within our hackathon time frame, and a third claimed that he would give it a shot, yet never came back into contact with us. 

Even still, we gave it an attempt as one of our members, Alberto, speaks some of the language, and understands the phonetics and vocabulary well enough to do his own research. Unfortunately, this meant we could not accomplish our initial goal of having a full 1-1 translation of our script in the spoken Cherokee, and thus we would sum up each paragraph in the script in the spoken Cherokee, yet finish the idea in English.

Although our hackathon journey did not go the way we planned, at the core of this all sits a powerful idea: Cherokee and other native american languages must be used in STEM circles, discussions, and research if the language is going to have a long-term future in a society which is rapidly evolving and advancing scientifically. Simply attempting to describe SAR in the Cherokee language opened up many possibilities for new words to be created and used in Cherokee, which otherwise would not even have a hope of existing. If advanced STEM classes are ever going to be taught again in the Cherokee language, people have to try (and fail) to translate these large scientific terms like “Synthetic Aperture Radar”, “Electromagnetism”, “Wavelength”, and out of these failures and first attempts at making new words, the actual “word makers” of the Cherokee language would see that there is a need for these words, and convene a council to actually cement them in the lexicon. 

Regardless of our failures and success, we can surely claim to have learned a great deal about both SAR technology, and the language of the land which we call home. 

What is Synthetic Aperture Radar? | Earthdata. (2020, April 16). Nasa.Gov. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar

FAQ: What is SAR? (2021, September 14). Ursa Space Systems. https://ursaspace.com/blog/faq-what-is-sar/

Wang, J. W. (2015). Antenna Theory and Design (No. 13426405497). http://is.buaa.edu.cn/__local/8/1A/7A/4CB8D4C448401FDDFEBB2C7AFC1_8B6D1FE0_147371.pdf

Castriotta, Volpi, A. G. F. (2021, July). Sentinel Data Access Annual Report (No. 2/3). Serco Public. https://scihub.copernicus.eu/twiki/pub/SciHubWebPortal/AnnualReport2020/COPE-SERCO-RP-21-1141_-_Sentinel_Data_Access_Annual_Report_Y2020_final_v2.3.pdf

SAR Data PreProcessing Steps. (2021). SERVIRglobal.net. https://doi.org/10.25966/ez4f-mg98

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NISAR. (2019, August). [Photograph]. https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/system/documents/files/26_NISAR_FINAL_9-6-19.pdf

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NASA Radar. (2017, August 6). [Photograph]. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/new-nasa-radar-technique-finds-lost-lunar-spacecraft

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SAR Satellite . (2020, November 12). [Photograph]. Ursa Space. https://ursaspace.com/blog/faq-what-is-sar/

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NASA SAR Handbook. (2020, April 16). [Photograph]. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar

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Optical vs SAR. (2020, November 12). [Photograph]. Ursa Space. https://ursaspace.com/blog/faq-what-is-sar/

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Kontoes, H. (2021, July 9). Figure 10 [Photograph]. Copernicus Sentinel Data Access Annual Report Y2020. https://scihub.copernicus.eu/twiki/pub/SciHubWebPortal/AnnualReport2020/COPE-SERCO-RP-21-1141_-_Sentinel_Data_Access_Annual_Report_Y2020_final_v2.3.pdf

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Change in water level. (2017). [Photograph]. Flood Forecasting. https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/system/documents/files/18_NISAR_Applications_Flood_Forecasting.pdfIMAGE6

Examples of SAR Applications. (2020, November 12). [Photograph]. Ursa Space. https://ursaspace.com/blog/faq-what-is-sar/

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SAR Examples. (2020, November 12). [Photograph]. Ursa Space. https://ursaspace.com/blog/faq-what-is-sar/

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Sequoyah. (2020). [Photograph]. https://visitcherokeenc.com/blog/entry/bet-you-didnt-know-this-about-the-sequoyah-statue-in-cherokee/

Image2 DEMO

Mingo Falls. (2021). [Photograph]. https://smokymountains.com/park/hikes/mingo-falls/#&gid=1&pid=22

#Radar, #Cherokee, #SyntheticApertureRadar, #SAR, #NativeLanguages, #IndigenousLanguages, #Diversity, #Culture

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.