Title :
Ground processing of Cassini RADAR imagery of Titan
Author :
Stiles, Bryan W. ; Gim, Yonggyu ; Hamilton, Gary ; Hensley, Scott ; Johnson, William T K ; Himada, Joanne ; West, Richard D. ; Callahan, Phil
Author_Institution :
Jet propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA
Abstract :
The Cassini RADAR instrument onboard the Cassini Orbiter is currently collecting SAR imagery of the surface of Saturn´s largest Moon, Titan. This paper describes the ground processing of Cassini SAR data. We focus upon the unusual features of the data and how these features impact the processing. We exhibit a data dependent mechanism we have implemented for eliminating artifacts due to attitude and ephemeris knowledge error. Finally we describe how we trade-off SAR performance vs. area of coverage when we design our spacecraft pointing profiles.
Keywords :
Saturn; radar imaging; space vehicles; synthetic aperture radar; Cassini Orbiter; RADAR instrument; SAR imagery; Titan; data dependent mechanism; ground processing; radio detection-ranging; spacecraft pointing profile design; synthetic aperture radar; Chirp; Image resolution; Instruments; Radar imaging; Radar measurements; Radiometry; Saturn; Space vehicles; Spaceborne radar; Synthetic aperture radar;
Conference_Titel :
Radar, 2006 IEEE Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-9496-8
DOI :
10.1109/RADAR.2006.1631767
