Airborne Sar Experiment to Simulate Geosynchronous Hydroterra Data and Investigate the Detection of Diurnal Changes

The idea of the former Earth Explorer 10 mission Hydroterra is to place a SAR system into a geosynchronous orbit to understand rapid processes of the diurnal water cycle over regions of interest in Europe and Africa. The DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute conducted an airborne SAR campaign to support the Hydroterra mission. Airborne data were collected to simulate the long integration time of a geosynchronous SAR image and to evaluate the potential to detect diurnal moisture changes. In this paper the airborne campaign is described and the achieved results are presented.