The TerraSAR-L mission and system

The TerraSAR-L system, currently in Phase B definition carried out by a European/Canadian consortium lead by EADS Astrium Ltd., provides ESA with its most powerful radar imaging programme to date. Key mission characteristics are a 5-year mission lifetime, global coverage from a 14-day repeat 635-km orbit, more than 20 minutes per orbit of SAR data acquisition in L-band, in both right-looking (nominal) and left-looking configurations, and a launch in late 2008. TerraSAR-L first mission priority is serving commercial applications focused on agriculture, forestry and marine applications. Joint products from TerraSAR-L and the German national programme TerraSAR-X use the complementary properties of the backscattering in L and X bands for high levels of classification performance necessary for crop monitoring, forest inventory and cartographic maps of different thematic content and scale. Scientific and institutional applications are defined focused on solid Earth monitoring relying on differential interferometry. L-band penetration of vegetation cover facilitates these applications also over vegetated surfaces. The high coherence of L-band assists the monitoring of ice sheet and glacier dynamics. Sea ice classification is supported with full polarimetric measurements. Large-scale land cover change detection, global forest biomass estimation, permafrost monitoring, wetland inventory, soil moisture retrieval and flood monitoring are also supported. A dedicated Wave Mode provides measurements of directional ocean surface wave spectra. Additionally for single-pass interferometry and generation of a global DEM, a complementary cartwheel system with different micro satellite constellations flying in close formation with TerraSAR-L has been investigated. The spacecraft is built around an active phased array antenna and provides full polarimetric capabilities, maximum bandwidth within the 85 MHz allocation for Earth observation in L-band, and repeat-pass ScanSAR interferometry.- The platform is based on a novel Snapdragon configuration. The TerraSAR-L Ground Segment provides the operational link between the spacecraft, the TerraSAR Exploitation and Service Infrastructure and the users. A high-performance modular architecture is designed to fulfil the high requirements on throughput, quality and accessibility of data, as well as the reuse of existing infrastructure elements and the interoperability with other missions, especially with the companion TerraSAR-X Ground Segment