Microwave Technology Activities for future SAR Candidate Earth Explorer Core Missions
Conference: EUSAR 2010 - 8th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
06/07/2010 - 06/10/2010 at Aachen, Germany
Proceedings: EUSAR 2010
Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF
Personal VDE Members are entitled to a 10% discount on this title
Authors:
Hélière, Florence; Lin, Chung-Chi; Fois, Franco; Arcioni, Marco; Lecuyot, Arnaud; Mangenot, Cyril; Klooster, Kees Van’t; Rinous, Peter; Aloisio, Marinella; Gallou, Nicolas Le (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)
Abstract:
Three candidate Earth Explorer Core Missions have been selected for Phase A after a User Consultation Meeting which took place in January 2009: BIOMASS, CoReH2O and PREMIER. A further down-selection shall take place in 2011/12, with a projected launch in the 2016/17 timeframe. Among the three candidates, two SAR missions are in the race: BIOMASS will carry a P-band polarimetric SAR for global observation of above-ground biomass and associated geophysical parameters as a primary objective; CoReH2O will provide dual-frequency (X/Ku-band) SAR observations of snow cover, glaciers and sea-ice for retrieving the snow cover extent, snow-water equivalent as well as other important cryospheric parameters. In complement to the Phase A studies, technology risk-retirement activities started, and their latest status and results are reported in this paper.