RADARSAT-1

This mosaic of Africa consists of approximately 1,600 scenes of Wide 2 images (south of the 10° S parallel) and ScanSAR Wide images (north of the 10° S parallel), which were acquired between 1997 and 2002. Credit: Canadian Space Agency (Click on image for larger view.)

RADARSAT-1 is a sophisticated Earth observation satellite developed by Canada to monitor environmental changes and the planet's natural resources.

Launched in November 1995, RADARSAT-1 provides Canada and the world with an operational radar satellite system capable of timely delivery of large amounts of data. Equipped with a powerful synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument, it acquires images of the Earth day or night, in all weather and through cloud cover, smoke and haze.

Why was RADARSAT-1 built?

RADARSAT-1 is a Canadian-led project involving the Canadian federal government, the Canadian provinces, the United States, and the private sector. It provides useful information to both commercial and scientific users in such fields as disaster management, interferometry, agriculture, cartography, hydrology, forestry, oceanography, ice studies and coastal monitoring.
The need for Earth observation data

As the second largest country in the world, with a variety of landscapes and climatic conditions, Canada recognized the practical and economic benefits of using space for Earth observation early on. With global environmental monitoring and protection being a worldwide concern, Earth observation is a key priority of the Canadian Space Program, and RADARSAT-1 was developed as Canada's flagship to pursue this priority.

RADARSAT-1 has proven to be an invaluable source of Earth observation data. The satellite's images are used internationally to manage and monitor the Earth's resources and to monitor global climate change, as well as in many other commercial and scientific applications. RADARSAT-1 is ideally suited to supporting these tasks because of its wide range of beams, SAR technology, frequent revisit period, high-quality products and fast, efficient delivery.

Canada is now a world leader in the processing of satellite remote sensing data, thanks in part to RADARSAT-1.

RADARSAT Operations

Each day, mission planners in Satellite Operations at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) prioritize client orders that come in from five RADARSAT-1 order desks and develop plans for data acquisition. From these, the planners generate command files and transmit them to the satellite's mission control facility at CSA.

The mission control engineers and controllers check the command files and prepare them to be sent up to RADARSAT-1 during the morning and evening passes. Uplinks are sent from RADARSAT antennas at CSA headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec, or in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. These command files begin to execute defined sequences the next imaging day.

CSA Mission Control staff send commands to RADARSAT-1 and closely monitor the health and safety of the satellite, as they fill customer orders from nearly 60 countries.

- CSA