Formation Flying L-Band Aperture Synthesis Mission Concept

ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission, SMOS, in operation since November 2009, is producing global maps of soil moisture and sea surface salinity with an average resolution of 40 km. In the context of a future L-band mission, it is necessary to address the future needs for a range of applications over land and ocean that call for much enhanced spatial resolution, down to 1–10 km. With today's knowledge, the spatial resolution of a microwave radiometer can be improved only by increasing and reshaping its aperture size. In this context, this paper presents the Formation Flying L-Band Aperture Synthesis (FFLAS) mission concept which focuses on using formation flying in combination with aperture synthesis as a potential way to improve the spatial resolution significantly. Moreover FFLAS makes full use of all lessons learnt from SMOS in-orbit experience.