COSMO-SkyMed

COSMO-SkyMed Overview

The COSMO-SkyMed system is a constellation of four radar satellites for Earth observation for dual (civil and military) use. Its purpose is to monitor the globe for the sake of emergency prevention (management of environmental risks), strategy (defence and national security), and scientific and commercial purposes, providing data on a global scale.

COSMO-SkyMed is at the forefront of global technology and uses high-resolution radar to observe the Earth day or night, regardless of weather conditions. The fourth satelite was laucnhed on November 5, 2010, and the complete constellation is now operational.

  • 4 satellite SAR constellation

  • Right & left looking acquisition

  • Short revisit time

  • Rapid response

  • Very high resolution - from 1 metre

  • High geo-location accuracy

  • All-weather day/night global coverage

  • High imaging capacity

  • Interferometric & polarimetric capability
COSMO-SkyMed Mission

Launch schedule: The first satellite in the constellation was successfully launched on June 7 2007

Flexible, multi-mode SAR sensor

Multi-polarimetric and multi-temporal capabilities enable many civilian and advanced defence applications. The sensor can acquire images of the earth in ScanSAR mode (large coverage with a medium to coarse spatial resolution) or in Stripmap mode (medium coverage with a fine resolution) or Spotlight mode (small coverage with metric resolution).
Multi-polarimetric and multi-temporal capabilities enable many civilian and advanced defence applications. The sensor can acquire images of the earth in ScanSAR mode (large coverage with a medium to coarse spatial resolution) or in Stripmap mode (medium coverage with a fine resolution) or Spotlight mode (small coverage with metric resolution). Imaging Capacity

Each satellite can acquire, daily:
  • Up to 75 SPOTLIGHT images
  • Up to 375 STRIPMAP or 150 SCANSAR images
The complete constellation can acquire a daily total of 1800 images
  • 1500 Wide Field
  • 300 Narrow Field
  • 560 GB/day

Interferometric capability
  • One of the best performances of COSMO-SkyMed system is the capability to carry out very accurate measurements based on phase signal (Interferometry) by using indifferently the satellites of the constellation. This guarantees a huge choice in terms of time intervals for change detection and coherence analysis (starting from 1 day intervals) and at the same time provides unprecedented revisit for applications based on the collection of a long time series of images.

Polarmetric products
  • Better target recognition
  • STRIPMAP mode in PINGPONG configuration
  • 15m resolution, 30km swath

Ground segment

World-wide

Fixed & mobile (C-MAPS) terminals

World-wide network of 20 GPS stations improve geolocation accuracy

External stations (X band + S band for TT&C)

  • Kiruna
  • Cordoba

The system can satisfy a User Request in the case of the first level of SAR standard products in as little as 72 hours for the system working in routine mode, 36 hours for the crisis mode and 18 hours for the very urgent mode