Seasat-A satellite scatterometer instrument evaluation

Author

Johnson, James W. ; Williams, Leon A., Jr. ; Bracalente, Emedio M. ; Beck, Fred B. ; Grantham, William L.

Author_Institution

NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA

Volume

5

Issue

2

fYear

1980

fDate

4/1/1980 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

138

Lastpage

144

Abstract

The Seasat-A satellite scatterometer (SASS) was designed to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction in twenty-four (24) independent cells over a 1000-km swath. It operated in the interrupted CW mode at a frequency of 14.6 GHz with four (4) fan beam antennas and used Doppler filtering in the receiver for resolving the cells on the surface. The instrument began operating in space on July 6, 1978, and gathered normalized radar cross section ( $\\sigma ^{0}$ ) data for approximately 2290 h. The purpose of this paper is to describe the in-orbit evaluation of the SASS hardware and its compatibility with the spacecraft. It has been determined that the scatterometer operated flawlessly throughout the mission, met all design requirements, and established a good data base for geophysical processing.

Keywords

Sea surface electromagnetic scattering; Antenna measurements; Geophysical measurements; Instruments; Oceans; Radar measurements; Satellites; Sea measurements; Sea surface; Spaceborne radar; Velocity measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0364-9059

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JOE.1980.1145461

Filename

1145461