C-band SAR for the GMES Sentinel-1 mission

The EU-ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program calls for a number of different Satellites called Sentinels to be launched within the next 6 years. The first among these are the two Sentinel-1 polar orbiting sun synchronous satellites which each carries onboard a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (C-SAR). ESA is undertaking the development, with Thales Alenia Space Italy as Prime Contractor, EADS Astrium Germany responsible for the C-SAR Instrument and EADS Astrium UK providing the central radar electronics. The paper describes the Sentinel-1 mission utilizing a constellation of two satellites each carrying a C-SAR, the requirements driving the instrument design, provides information on the key antenna units and discusses the instrument calibration.