Radarsat-2
 | This article documents a current or recent spaceflight. Details may change as the mission progresses. Initial news reports may be unreliable. The last updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. For more information please see WikiProject Spaceflight. |
RADARSAT-2 is an Earth observation satellite that was successfully launched December 14 2007[1][2][3] for the Canadian Space Agency by Starsem, using a Soyuz FG launch vehicle, from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome. It has a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) with multiple polarization modes. Its highest resolution will be 3 m with 100 m positional accuracy.
The prime contractor on the project is MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), who have previously built projects such as the Canadarm. Other collaborating companies include EMS Technologies and Alenia. EMS Technologies Space & Technology/Montreal division was bought by MDA in 2005. RADARSAT-2 is owned and operated by MDA.
RADARSAT-2 is a follow-on to RADARSAT-1. It will have the same orbit (798 km altitude sun-synchronous with 6 p.m. ascending node and 6 a.m. descending node). RADARSAT-2 should be separated by half an orbit period (~50 min) from RADARSAT-1 (in terms of ground track it would represent ~12 days ground track separation). It is intended to fill a wide variety of roles, including sea ice mapping and ship routing, iceberg detection, agricultural crop monitoring, marine surveillance for ship and pollution detection, terrestrial defence surveillance and target identification, geological mapping, land use mapping, wetlands mapping, topographic mapping.
RADARSAT-2 was tested at the David Florida Laboratory near Ottawa, Ontario before the start of its launch campaign.
External links
References
- ^ "Soyuz rocket lifts Canadian radar satellite into space". Retrieved 2007-12-14.
- ^ "RADARSAT-2 has been successfully launched". Retrieved 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Successful launch of RADARSAT-2". Retrieved 2007-12-14.
 | This spacecraft or satellite related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |