TerraSAR-X for oceanography mission overview

TerraSAR-X is a new generation, high resolution radar satellite, which is planned for launch in 2006. The mission is setup to produce operational remote sensing products for commercial and scientific use from a spaceborne X-Band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. After a 5 month in-orbit commissioning phase TerraSAR-X will be operational for an active lifetime of 5 years. TerraSAR-X is Germany´s first Earth Observation space project based on public-private partnership of the German Aerospace Center and the ASTRJUM GmbH. The TerraSAR-X mission was designed to serve two main objectives: 1) provide the scientific community with high-quality, X-band SAR-data for research and application purposes; 2) support the establishment of an Earth Observation market; and 3) and develop a sustainable Earth Observation service in Europe, based on TerraSAR-X derived products. The broad spectrum of TerraSAR-X applications, include: Hydrology, Geology, Climatology, Oceanography, Environmental- and Disaster Monitoring as well as Cartography. The scientific potential of TerraSAR-X is based on a combination of unprecedented features of the SAR instrument, which will for the first time be operational in space. The features of TerraSAR-X offer new and promising applications for oceanography. In this work some promising applications concerning wind, wave and current measurements as well as monitoring of morphodynamic changes are introduced.