An X-band SAR satellite payload design with low cost approach for disasters management

Taiwan Island was created by tectonic plate collision where the continent building is still active with numerous earthquake activities. Taiwan is also in one of the most prevalent monsoon and typhoon areas of the world. Monsoons and typhoons bring along heavy precipitation that produce significant threat of mud slide and land slide in the mountains. SAR satellite missions, with their advantages of all-weather capability, repeat pass, high spatial resolution and sufficient swath, can provide not only in-time coverage at disaster locations, but also environment monitoring, disasters assessment and resource survey. The images product will serve the needs of Taiwan government agencies first not only before and after the crises but also during the crises. However, the disasters management community users have been in shortage of timely low cost imaging data ever since the disasters management operations became effective. Thus, a low cost SAR satellite payload design effort has been initiated in NSPO (National Space Organization) with the satellites and key SAR technologies in Taiwan.