Products/Airbus Defence & Space/Products & Services/Satellite Imagery/Radar

Radar
Optical

TerraSAR-X Imagery Products

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The high-resolution radar satellite TerraSAR-X reliably provides high-resolution SAR imagery with a resolution of up to 1m independent of weather conditions and illumination. The satellite features a unique geometric accuracy unrivalled by any other commercial spaceborne sensor today and an excellent radiometric accuracy.

KEY FEATURES
  • Flexible resolution (1m / 3m / 18.5m) and footprint: high resolution for specific target areas, medium resolution for large area coverage
  • Geometric accuracy unrivalled by any other commercial spaceborne sensor today
  • Excellent radiometric accuracy
  • Weather-independent site access time of 2.5 days max. (2 days at 95% probability) to any point on Earth
  • Unique agility (rapid switches between imaging modes and polarisations)

IMAGE PRODUCTS
TerraSAR-X reliably provides X-band SAR imagery in varying imaging modes offering different polarization options (single & dual pol.).  TerraSAR-X Basic Image Products can be acquired in one of these main image modes:
  • High Resolution SpotLight: up to 1m resolution, scene size 5 to 10km (width) x 5km (length)
  • SpotLight: up to 2m resolution, scene size 10km (width) x 10km (length)
  • StripMap: up to 3m resolution, scene size 30km (width) x 50km (length)
  • ScanSAR: up to 18.5m resolution, scene size 100km (width) x 150km (length)
  • StripMap and ScanSAR: acquisition length extendable to 1,650 km


KEY BENEFITS

  • Reliable, waether & daylight independent image acquisition & gapless monitoring capability
  • Capability to measure velocity of targets, ocean currents, surface movements and surface height variation
  • Near-real-time (NRT) data & information delivery over huge areas due to fully automatic processing & feature extraction
  • Very high spatial resolution information: up to 1m today and ~0.5m in the future
  • Large area coverage within one shot: up to 100 x 150 km today and 200 x 200 km in near future
  • Broad service portfolio benefitting from specific SAR assets
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TerraSAR-X-based Geo-Information

Benefiting from its accurate measurement, reliable monitoring and fully automatic, NRT processing capabilities, TerraSAR-X builds the reliable basis for a broad services & applications portfolio:
  • Maritime Services
  • Change Detection Services
  • Surface Movement Monitoring
  • Digital Elevation Models
  • Direct Access Service
  • Topographic Mapping
  • Land Use & Land Cover Mapping

What's new about TerraSAR-X?

Enabled by reprogramming, two new modes were and will be added to even better benefit customer requirements: · Wide ScanSAR Mode: 40m @ 200 - 270 x 200 km² (length up to 1500 km) spatial resolution, e.g. for maritime large area monitoring applications (October 1st, 2013) · Staring Spotlight Mode: down to 0.25m @ 4 x3.7 km² or 2.5 x 7.5 km² spatial resolution VHR data@ unique radiometric quality, e.g. for Image Intelligence (IMINT) applications (November 2nd, 2013).
Besides that, TerraSAR-X will build a constellation with Hisdesat’s X-band SAR satellite PAZ in 2014, increasing the global mean revisit time from 43h today to ~21h benefitting data hungry, high monitoring frequency applications.