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Tag: radar imagery

  • Airbus and Hisdesat process first TerraSAR-X/PAZ radar interferogram

    Airbus Defence and Space and Hisdesat Servicios Estratégicos S.A. have generated the first joint TerraSAR-X/PAZ radar interferogram. This milestone demonstrates the missions’ capacity for cross-sensor interferometry, whose processing is among the most challenging.

    Interferograms are typically used to derive the topographic elevation and deformation of the Earth’s surface, and are created using at least two different images acquired at different date. This flattened cross-sensor-interferogram has been created from a mixed image pair with four days’ temporal separation acquired by TerraSAR-X and PAZ (StripMap scenes from Nov. 22-26, 2018). The area covers the oil and gas production site Burgan (Kuwait) and parts of the Persian Gulf. The oil field is the world largest sandstone oil field with the total surface area of about 1,000 km².

    As PAZ is positioned in the same orbit as TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X and features exactly identical ground swaths and acquisition modes, they all three form a high-resolution SAR satellite constellation, jointly exploited by Hisdesat and Airbus. With the launch of PAZ, the observation repeat cycle has been divided by half, which improves the monitoring of fast ground deformation phenomena that can endanger lives and infrastructures.

    “This is a major step towards achieving the implementation of our TerraSAR-X/PAZ radar constellation,” said Hanjo Kahabka, head of production and radar constellation manager at Airbus. “The level of accuracy obtained with this interferogram is a guarantee for our customers to continue to rely on the high quality standard we have set with TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, but with an improved monitoring capacity,”

    “In Hisdesat we are very proud of reaching this milestone. Interferometry is one of the most technically demanding applications, and thanks to this successful joint exercise with Airbus we have not only demonstrated the top performance of our PAZ satellite but its full compatibility with TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X,” said Miguel García Primo, CEO at Hisdesat. “Now operation in constellation can become a reality and we will be able to provide to our customers full set of images and services with the constellation.”

  • NASA releases satellite damage map of Camp Fire

    The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena has produced a map showing the damage caused by the Camp Fire in Northern California.

    After two and a half weeks of historic destruction, the fire is now 100 percent contained. Teams continue to search the destruction — including the destroyed town of Paradise — for remains. As of Sunday, the death toll is 85, making it California’s deadliest fire.

    The map shows the damage as of Nov. 16.

    Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
    Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    The map was developed using synthetic aperture radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites operated by the European Space Agency.

    The map covers an area of 48 miles by 48 miles (78 by 77 kilometers), outlined in red on left. A closeup view of damage to the town of Paradise is inset on right, outlined in white. The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant changes in the ground surface.

    The ARIA team creates its maps by comparing before-and-after satellite images of the fire region to see the extent of change between the two images. For this map, they compared the data for the image to a Cal Fire map for preliminary validation.

    Although the maps may be less reliable over vegetated terrain, such as forests, they can help officials and first responders identify heavily damaged areas and allocate resources as needed.

    Sentinel-1 data were accessed through the Copernicus Open Access Hub. The image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA and analyzed by the NASA-JPL/Caltech ARIA team.