The Radarsat II mission

In March 1998, the Canadian Space Agency awarded the Radarsat II contract to Macdonald Dettwiler Associates (MDA). This was a second step, after the creation of Radarsat International (RSI), toward the establishment of a fully commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing service. The Radarsat II mission will ensure the continuity of the Radarsat I data and products for applications such as environmental monitoring and resource management, and will open new market applications such as surveillance and mapping. The Radarsat II satellite will carry a C-band SAR offering multiple modes of operation including quad polarization, 3-meter high resolution and right or left looking imaging mode. All Radarsat I modes will be supported to ensure data continuity. The satellite will be placed on the same orbit as Radarsat I with a delay of 30 minutes to allow acquisition of interferometric data during the ending period of operation of Radarsat I. The paper reviews the development status, the modes of operation and data products that will be offered and explains how the architecture of the instrument was evolved to generate them.