PAZ Ground Segment Operational Concept

PAZ mission is a Spanish governmental mission, based on a space-based SAR satellite and its Ground Segment. It's intended to provide radar imagery services for security and defence and also for civilian and scientific users. The satellite it's planned to be launched in the last trimester of 2014. The Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) is responsible for the Ground Segment, which is developed by INTA itself together with a set of Spanish companies and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), under the technical direction of INTA. Moreover, INTA is responsible for the PAZ Calibration and Validation Centre and for the Scientific Exploitation of PAZ Mission. The operational concept of PAZ Ground Segment is presented in this paper. It is driven by the user requests and data acquisition. Users can perform acquisition, processing and dissemination requests, obtaining L1B PAZ products.