Development and Orbit Demonstration of Small Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite

Our group at ISAS/JAXA have developed a X band synthetic aperture radar system compatible with 100kg small satellite since 2013. The ground resolution is 1-3m with strip map mode and sliding spotlight mode. A new start-up company launched a demonstration satellite in Dec.2020 and successfully performed the first SAR observation in Feb.2021. We report the summary of the SAR development and the orbital demonstration.