ALOS-2 mission and development status

JAXA is developing the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) carrying the state of the art L-band SAR named PALSAR-2. ALOS-2 mission is the follow-on of ALOS “Daichi” mission and PALSAR-2 succeeds to PALSAR onboard ALOS. PALSAR contributed to domestic and international disaster management activities by its interferometric application (InSAR). Compared to the PALSAR, higher spatial resolution, better NESZ (Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero) and better S/A (Signal to Ambiguity ratio) are required for PALSAR-2. In order to meet these requirements, JAXA introduced several improvements such as maximum bandwidth observation for PALSAR-2, spotlight mode with Active Phased Array Antenna, high power efficiency device, chirp modulation technique and dual receiving antenna system. In addition, very accurate orbit control and short repeat-pass orbit (14 days) will give higher coherence of interferometry.