Email statement: NASA Acquires Advanced Radar and WorldDEM Data from Airbus for Enhanced Earth Observation Missions
NASA has secured access to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tasking and WorldDEM products from Airbus through the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program to help identify and evaluate science and research application initiatives to support the NASA Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Through the CSDA program, NASA intends to acquire data products from small satellite constellations, affording the means of complementing NASA acquired data with higher resolutions, increased temporal frequency or other novel capabilities in support of existing Earth science research and application activities.
Through the agreement, NASA will have access to task the entire Airbus Radar Constellation, which includes three satellites with spatial resolutions ranging from 25cm to 40m resolution. Radar imagery can be collected independent of weather and daylight conditions over any point on Earth and is especially suited for increased acquisition capacity, improved global mean revisit time and a significantly reduced interferometric repeat-cycle that supports data-hungry, high monitoring frequency applications. Data from Airbus will be used to support the NASA-ISRO SAR Mission to calibrate and validate their synthetic aperture radar activities which span a broad range of disciplines such as solid Earth, cryosphere and ecosystem research. To support this mission, Airbus will deliver over 1500 radar scenes and nearly 75,000 km2 of WorldDEM products.
Airbus will also provide digital elevation models (WorldDEM) to describe the topography of areas to support the NISAR mission. The WorldDEM elevation product suite includes access to WorldDEM Neo, a global digital elevation model created from highly accurate TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X data acquired from 2017-2021. WorldDEM Neo sets a new standard in satellite-based elevation models offering homogeneous, seamless, pole-to-pole coverage with a 5m pixel spacing and 2m relative accuracy, perfectly suited for line-of-sight analysis, hydrological modeling, satellite imagery orthorectification, mission planning, and much more. Both Digital surface models (DSM) and digital terrain models (DTMs) are available.
Radar Constellation Staring SpotLight image @ up to 25cm resolution. Puch Bowl Crater, Honolulu, Hawaii, Bafa Release-No.: 1108742/1129905
WorldDEM Neo DSM @ 5m resolution (with Radar image overlay). Diamond Head & Punch Bowl Crater, Honolulu, Hawaii
We are thrilled to provide high-quality SAR and elevation data to the NASA science and research community. We look forward to continuing to serve the NASA community with multi-source, multi-resolution satellite data (EO and SAR) through the now well-established CSDA Program.
Nicolas Stussi
Managing Director of the Geospatial Division of Airbus, North America
To learn more about the program, what datasets are available and how to get started, visit our program page.
