The Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Mission

The Radarsat Earth-observation satellite was launched on November 4, 1995 aboard a Delta 2 rocket. Equipped with a sophisticated synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Radarsat can produce images of extraordinary clarity even through clouds, smog, haze, smoke, and darkness. The SAR has a variety of operating modes. It can be adjusted to produce swathes between 35 and 500 km in width, with ground resolutions from 100 m to as low as eight. In addition, the beam can be steered at angles up to 49° from the satellite's nadir vector, giving it the unique ability to image areas it is not directly overflying. In exchange for the launch, CSA agreed to provide NASA with access to the SAR data, and to execute a 180° yaw-around of Radarsat twice during its lifetime to map the Antarctic continent. Preliminary results from the first of these Antarctic Mapping Missions, dubbed AMM-1, are presented