RADAR Gets It Done
Posted by: Matteo
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Posted date:
June 1, 2010 |
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- Has anyone driven over certain desert dunes in Afghanistan during the past few hours?
- Is a ship on the high seas fishing illegally?
- Is subsidence threatening buildings in an urban area that previously had been mined for coal?
- How much biomass is there in a square kilometer of forest?
- How much ice is in a section of the Arctic Ocean?
Satellite-based radar can answer all of these questions.
Currently, only the Canadian company MDA, the German company Infoterra GmbH, and the Italian company e-GEOS operate commercial radar satellites. All three missions — RADARSAT-2, TerraSAR-X, and COSMO-SkyMed, respectively — have similar resolution modes. RADARSAT-2 captures data at “high-to-low” resolutions, while TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed capture data at high- to mid-resolution. U.S. operators of Earth observation satellites have not deployed radar instruments, opting instead to focus on higher resolution optical imaging. However, two U.S. companies, Fugro EarthData and Intermap, acquire radar imaging from aircraft.