BackForwardInstrument:  ASAR 

Instrument details
Acronym ASAR
Full name Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar
Purpose High-resolution all-weather multi-purpose imagery for ocean, land and ice
Short description C-band SAR, frequency 5.331 GHz, multi-polarisation and variable pointing/resolution [see detailed characteristics below]
Background Evolution of AMI-SAR flown on ERS-1 and ERS-2
Scanning Technique Side-looking, 15-45° off-nadir, swath 100 to 405 km, depending on operation mode - See table
Resolution 30 m to 1 km, depending on operation mode - See table
Coverage / Cycle Global coverage in 5 day for the ‘global monitoring’ mode (if used for 70 % of the time); in longer periods for other operation modes, up to 3 months
Mass 832 kg Power 1400 W Data Rate 100 Mbps

 

Providing Agency ESA
Instrument Maturity Flown on an R&D satellite
Utilization Period: 2002 to 2012
Last update: 2022-07-26
Detailed characteristics
Operation mode Resolution Swath Field of regard Polarisation

Stripmap

30 m 100 km 485 km HH or VV

ScanSAR alternating pol

30 m 100 km 485 km VV/HH, HH/HV, VV/VH

ScanSAR wide swath

150 m 405 km 405 km HH or VV

ScanSAR wide swath

150 m 405 km 405 km HH or VV

ScanSAR global monitoring

1 km 405 km 405 km HH or VV

Wave

30 m 5 x 5 km2 imagettes sampled at 100 km intervals HH or VV
Satellites this instrument is flying on

Note: a red tag indicates satellites no longer operational, a green tag indicates operational satellites, a blue tag indicates future satellites

Instrument classification
  • Earth observation instrument
  • Active and radio-occultation sensor
  • Imaging radar (SAR)
WIGOS Subcomponents
  • Subcomponent 1
  • SAR imagers and altimeters
  • SAR imager
Mission objectives
Primary mission objectives
  • Glacier cover
  • Glacier motion
  • Glacier topography
  • Ice sheet topography
  • Land surface topography
  • Sea-ice cover
  • Sea-ice type
Evaluation of Measurements