ROSE-L - The Copernicus Expansion L-Band SAR Mission

The paper provides an overview on the background, the objectives and the current implementation state of the Radar Observing System over Europe in L-band (ROSE-L) mission, one of the 6 Copernicus Expansion missions under development by the European Space Agency. The overview on the mission status covers in particular the description of the three baseline SAR modes, as expected at the current mission phase (start of phase C), i.e. the dual-pol and quad-pol wide swath modes and the wave mode, entailing the synergic illumination aspects with the Sentinel-1 modes, and an updated analysis on the mission coverage.