Technical Information

Successfully launched on June 15th, 2007, TerraSAR-X has been fully operational since early 2008. With its active antenna, the spacecraft acquires high-quality X-band radar images of the entire planet whilst circling Earth in a polar orbit at 514 km altitude. TerraSAR-X is designed to carry out its task for 5.5 years, independent of weather conditions and illumination, and reliably provides radar imagery with a resolution of up to 1m and a unique geometric accuracy.

Key Technical Features include:

• Active phased array X-band SAR
• Single, dual and quad polarisation
• Side-looking acquisition geometry
• Sun-synchronous dawn-dusk repeat orbit
• Repetition rate: 11 days; due to swath overlay, a 2.5 day revisit time (2 days at 95% probability) to any point on Earth can be achieved
• Orbit altitude range from 512 km to 530 km

More technical information about TerraSAR-X

A Valuable Partner for TerraSAR-X

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X Add-On for Digital Elevation Measurement) a radar satellite almost identical to TerraSAR-X (in orbit since June 2007) will circle the Earth together with TerraSAR-X as a unique satellite formation.

In a formation flight at distances of a few kilometres down to less than 200 metres, the “twins” will record data synchronously in the so-called StripMap Mode (3m ground resolution) and thus acquire the data basis for a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of an unprecedented quality, accuracy, and coverage.