Session 1 – SEGMENTED ARCHITECTURES/DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS SAR Satellite Mission Analysis and Implementation with Along-Track Formation Flying - IAA-LA2-01-01 Leonardo Cappuccio*; J. Lugo; P. Weder / INVAP *
[email protected] Over the last few years, there has been a definite trend in the satellite industry that shows distributed mission concepts being increasingly considered in satisfying a vast diversity of needs. Some of the distributed missions are designed to fulfill specific goals which would not be possible to accomplish with monolithic satellite missions. Others take advantage of the new distributed scenarios to further optimize previously existing systems. A particular case is the utilization of the distributed concept to enhance some capabilities of satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions. In this context, an along-track flying formation composed of two polarimetric satellites is introduced, as a feasible alternative to single satellite SAR. This new approach is driven by a reduction of size and mass per satellite, making them suitable payloads for less expensive launch services. As an additional advantage, a supposed critical failure in one of the satellites would not imply the end of the whole mission, but only a degradation of the achieved performance. Replacement of a damaged satellite may also be considered, since it would represent a reduced fraction of the overall mission cost. Another interesting fact is that multiple mission phases, each with different formation geometries, could be possible as well, so that the same system could also be used, for example, in across-track configuration. The segmented architecture SAR presented in this work is possible because it relies on the reception of the echo information from two independent phase centers, one per satellite.