Home > News > SICORP - Commercial news > TerraSAR-X

Spot Image, exclusive sales agent for TerraSAR-X products and services Infoterra GmbH, sole supplier of data from the TerraSAR-X radar satellite, has chosen Spot Image to be its exclusive sales agent for several countries and markets, for all of the data products and services derived from this sensor, and in particular for direct access to telemetry and for the ground segment which processes the data. TerraSAR-X, whose launch is scheduled during the first half of 2007, is being developed through a public and private partnership between DLR, a German aerospace research organisation and EADS Astrium GmbH respectively.

A flexible and operational system

TerraSAR-X is an active matrix, X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), capable of acquiring data with a resolution of 1 metre, and in all weather conditions, both during the daytime and at night. TerraSAR-X has a repeat period of 11 days. However, it can observe on both sides of its trajectory, which means it can acquire any point on Earth every 4.5 days; furthermore 90% of these points are covered every 2 days. The satellite has on-board storage capacity of 256 gigabits and can downlink the data in real time.

acquisition modes

Multiple acquisition modes TerraSAR-X will operate in 3 alternate operating modes: SpotLight: 1 m resolution for a surface area of 5 km x 10 km StripMap: 3 m resolution for a surface area of 30 km x 50 km ScanSAR: 16 m resolution for a surface area of 100 km x 150 km The satellite switches very quickly from one imaging mode to another; the distance between two consecutive Spotlight scenes is 20 km, while it is only 7 km in StripMap or ScanSAR mode.

A full range of products Basic Products These come with: 4 levels of radiometric and geometric corrections, from raw to orthorectified data, in either single or multiple views various types of polarisation, single or dual polarisations with HH, VV, HV and VH combinations Geoinformation Products (GI) Basic GI products: Ortho-images Mosaics Coherence change detection Advanced GI Products: Topographical maps Thematic maps Auxiliary input data: Multisource data: both optical and radar Digital Elevation Models (DEM), Ground Control Points (GCP)…

Extract from a simulated TerraSAR-X image © Infoterra

Extract from a simulated TerraSAR-X multi-temporal image, and example of classification (X-HH, March, May, June) (© Infoterra)

The direct receiving system, which enables users to acquire TerraSAR-X telemetry directly, consists of a TerraSAR-X receiving station and a pre-processing terminal for creating the desired products. This turnkey system comes with a receiving licence and user training.

Priority applications The main areas of use TerraSAR-X products and services will be a major component of many geographic information applications, among which: defence and security topographical and thematic mapping agriculture: mapping of crops, precision agriculture (irrigation, fertilising and pesticide application) identifying forest stands, providing information for audits and monitoring of forest cover regional and urban planning, and environmental protection support coastline management and ship detection geology risk management (flood maps …), planning and supervision of supply networks (oil pipelines…) System characteristics and their applications X-band acquisition: surface characteristics mapping and distinction of small scale surface characteristics Different simultaneous polarisations: class feature description High geometric resolution: smaller object detection High radiometric resolution: increased number of thematic classes Advanced revisit capability, from different viewing angles, independently of weather and lighting conditions: frequent observations, regular monitoring and frequent map updating Flexible and efficient system: rapid switch from one imaging mode to another (wide swath and/or high geometric resolution): detailed observations over vast areas and risk diagnostic products in near-real time