Reference project: ASIRAS (Experimental Assessment of SAR / Interferometric Altimeter Concept)

Measurement flight for above the ice (DLR (CC-BY 3.0)

Airborne interferometric Radar Altimeter with SAR beam sharpening for ice reconnaissance over Arctic and Antarctica.

Customer: European Space Agency (ESA)

ASIRAS is an airborne system designed for sea-ice and ice sheet monitoring. It has been developed by ESA under a Technology Research Program contract. The main sensor of this system is a high resolution Ku-band radar altimeter with 1GHz bandwidth. The observation concept is based on a scaled configuration of SIRAL sensor on board CryoSat. The principle of the measurements is based on a combination of ranging, SAR and Interferometric techniques. The development and the validation of ASIRAS are now completed. The system will be extensively used during the Calibration and Validation campaigns of CryoSat mission. RST is prime contractor leading a team of European industry and institutes. RST is reponsible for SAR system development, real time control software and SAR processing.