IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014 - 56

Evolution of the
RADARSAT Program
Guy SeGuin
International Space Consultant
SaTiSh SrivaSTava and deniS auGer
Canadian Space Agency

1. INTRODUCTION
he RADARSAT program takes its origin in the seventies
when the Canadian Government was seeking a reliable
technology to ensure safe navigation through sea ice. At that
time there was an expectation that it would be necessary for
large tanker to navigate through the Beaufort Sea to transport oil extracted from
drilling platforms. During
the same period the Canadian Center for Remote
Sensing was developing
SAR applications using an
airborne SAR instrument
on a Convair 580. One
of these applications of
great interest for the Canadian Ice Service was ice
discrimination provided
by the C-band SAR data
to support the development of ice map to guide
navigation in winter in
the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence
Special Section on
Seaway. With the combination of both, interest for
oil transportation in the
Beaufort Sea and the need
for accurate and frequent ice map the business case for RADARSAT-1 was born. This paper provides an overview on
the RADARSAT program since its beginning and is partially
based on a presentation delivered in October 2013 at the
Canadian Space Agency on the motivation and evolution of
the RADARSAT program [1].

2. RADARSAT-1
Launched in November 1995, RADARSAT-1 was the first
Canadian mission to provide Canada and the world with
an operational C-band SAR data satellite system capable of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2321381
Date of publication: 24 June 2014

timely delivery of large amounts of data in all weather and
lighting conditions.
RADARSAT-1 was providing selectable imaging modes in
horizontal polarization with resolution ranging from 8 m to
100 m in swath ranging from 45 km to 500 km. The satellite
was flying at an altitude of 798 km altitude on a sun-synchronous orbit of 24 days with
6 p.m. ascending node and
6 a.m. descending node
and circled the earth 14
times per day. Despite a
planned mission lifetime
of 5.25 years RADARSAT-1
has remained operational
17.3 years delivering image
quality meeting the performance requirements until
April 2013.
RADARSAT-1 was used
for many more applications than ice mapping.
One request of NASA,
which provided the launch
Space Agencies
of the satellite, was the possibility of reorienting the
Image lIcensed by Ingram PublIshIng
satellite to operate in a leftlooking mode to map the
center of Antarctica to accomplish the first complete mapping
of Antarctica in 1997.
The satellite was also used to monitor the extent of marine
oil spills, providing vital information for spill control and clean
up operations, to provide land/water delineation for hydrology, to examine and assess crop characteristics and planting
practices, to help map and monitor world deforestation and to
accurately measure changes in ocean waves and winds. Many
significant geological structural features were also mapped
with RADARSAT-1 and the mission realized complete coverage of the World's continents, continental shelves and polar
icecaps, stereo-radar coverage of the planet's landmass and the
first high-resolution interferometric coverage of Canada.

june 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014