While most scientists using remote sensing are familiar with passive, optical images from the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat, NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2, another type of remote sensing data is making waves: Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR. SAR is a type of active data collection where a sensor produces its own energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back after interacting with the Earth. While optical imagery is similar to interpreting a photograph, SAR data require a different way of thinking in that the signal is instead responsive to surface characteristics like structure and moisture.