The new SAR instrument for Thales Alenia Space HE-R1000 satellites

HE-R1000 is one of the SAR product lines developed by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) with self-funded R&D for the commercial market. All the versions of this product Line are designed to offer the following key features: high revisit time (i.e. multiple data take opportunities per day over the same target), due to the inclined orbit optimized for each specific Customer/area of interest. High operational capability in terms of number of images that can be acquired and down-loaded per orbit, each orbit. Agile operation, i.e. high manoeuvre capability for image acquisition and for repointing to acquire successive images in a defined, even small, region of interest. Very high resolution granted by the satellite agility and large signal instantaneous bandwidth. SAR payload sensitivity, i.e. Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero, provided by the antenna area and transmitted power. The SAR instrument is based on two subsystems, namely: the SAR Electronics Subsystem (SES), and the SAR antenna Subsystem (SAS). The SES being a fully redundant subsystem based on equipment and an architecture with a long successful flight heritage. The SAS is a centre fed dual reflector (LURA - Large Unfurlable Reflector Antenna) fed by a planar active phased array (FAA – Feed Array Assembly). The SAS is a new design based on many flight-proven elements; it completed the space qualification in 2022.