Space, as with land, sea, and air, is now a well-established operating environment for radars. As in other environments, radars operating in space assume a wide variety of forms and span a wide range of applications. This chapter will focus on satellite-borne synthetic aperture radars (SARs) for remote sensing applications. This is an important and growing field with numerous applications in the areas of oceanography; land use; seismology; volcanology; disaster assessment; and the monitoring of sea ice, maritime economic zones, environmental conditions, etc.

Chapter Contents:

• 10.1 Introduction
• 10.2 Historical Perspective
• 10.3 Orbits
• 10.4 Design Considerations for the Spaceborne SAR
• 10.5 Special Modes and Capabilities
• 10.6 Design Example: Germany's TerraSAR-X
• 10.7 Summary
• 10.8 References
• 10.9 Further Reading

Inspec keywords: spaceborne radar; oceanographic techniques; seismology; synthetic aperture radar; environmental monitoring (geophysics); remote sensing by radar

Other keywords: maritime economic zone monitoring; disaster assessment; seismology; remote sensing applications; volcanology; satellite-borne synthetic aperture radars; environmental condition monitoring; oceanography; space-based SAR; land use; sea ice monitoring

Subjects: Radar equipment, systems and applications; Instrumentation and techniques for geophysical, hydrospheric and lower atmosphere research; Oceanographic and hydrological techniques and equipment