EADS Astrium has secured British National Space Centre funding to further develop its low-cost airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, following successful trials of its MicroSAR airborne demonstrator on a UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) B-N Group BN-2 Islander.
The SAR technology is being developed for applications such as Astrium's QuaSAR, intended for unmanned air vehicles, and its intended spaceborne MicroSAR low-cost family of integrated instrument/spacecraft X-band SAR satellites.
The trials over Portsmouth in the UK generated high-quality X-band imagery through cloud from 3,000-7,000ft (900-2,100m), and the 49kg (108lb) instrument can provide image resolution down to 1m.
In addition to the CORE radar central electronics system at the heart of the demonstrator, it includes a low-cost active phased-array antenna and an inertial measurement unit to measure and record the aircraft movement, allowing motion compensation in the image processing.
Source: Flight International