SHARAD: The MRO 2005 shallow radar

SHARAD is a subsurface sounding radar provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) as a facility instrument to be flown on the NASA mission Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shall be launched on August 2005 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and shall deliver a payload designed to provide observations from a low Mars orbit with a nominal science period starting from October 2006. SHARAD operating parameters, 20 MHz central frequency with a 10 MHz bandwidth, shall allow to study the planet in a way that shall complement previous and recent results, shall be complementary to the other Italian sounding radar Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) in terms of scale and resolution, and shall return scientific data for Martian soil in order to support the site selection for future landing missions. In this paper the scientific objectives and the system analysis will be discussed and the expected performance is evaluated.