Changing the economics of space Overview of Nova

Changing the economics of space Overview of Nova. SAR September 2016

Nova. SAR Programme Overview • Demonstration S band SAR mission – Proving low cost approach – Medium resolution with wide coverage – Multiple modes and multi-polarisation (non-coherent) • First satellite launching December 2016 • Data becoming available around June 2017 • UK Government involvement – Grant to support development – In return get 15% of the data • To support R&D • Data freely available to academia, research organisations, industry – UKSA establishing UK user group – UK Space Applications Catapult • Handling user requests for imagery • Storing and archiving data • Making data available on portal 2

Mission Overview • 7 year mission • Multiple imaging modes – Resolution 6 -30 m, Swath 20 -140 km • Multi-polarisations: – HH, VV, VH, HV possible – Single, dual, tri and quad polar imaging available BUT with some compromise in resolution or swath • Up to 1 million km 2 ground coverage per day – Payload orbital duty cycle of >120 s • >800 km strip image • Imagery products – SAR processed to Level 1 – Slant range complex and ground change detected – Geo. TIFF format – Compatible with Sentinel Toolbox 3

Baseline Imaging Modes • Mode 1: Med Resolution - Scan. SAR – 20 m resolution / 100 km swath – Scan. SAR Mode – 4 looks • Mode 2: Maritime Mode (with AIS) – Deliberately ambiguous in azimuth but used for ship detection – 6 -14 m resolution / 400 km swath – 1 look • Mode 3: Highest resolution with good quality image - Strip. Map – – • Sacrificing swath 6 m resolution / 20 km swath Stripmap Mode 3 looks Mode 4: Maximum Swath – Scan. SAR Wide – – Sacrificing resolution 30 m resolution / 140 km swath Scan. SAR Wide mode 4 looks 4

Forestry • Spaceborne SAR is well suited to forestry applications since a large proportion of the world's forests are found – in tropical areas, where there is cloud cover for much of the year – at high latitudes where there are long periods of darkness during the winter • Wide area Scan. SAR modes are able to support large area assessments • High resolution Stripmap mode can support more detailed analysis of specific areas • S-band – offers good contrast between forested and non-forested areas – has been shown to have some ability to penetrate the forest canopy hence enhancing the information content – allows improved mapping in rainy conditions • Multipolarisations will provide further benefit to – distinguishing between forested and non-forested areas – separating forest types 5

Forestry S-Band multi-pol Google Earth 6

Multipolarimetric decomposition of S/X-band airborne imagery • Polarimetric decomposition brings about a finer separation of the vegetated areas at S-band compared to X-band • Classification of forested areas is also better with the S-band data, e. g. white frame in the bottom right corner 7

Average Global Revisits in Hours - Mode 1 Revisits every • 2 -3 days at UK latitudes • 3 -4 days within +/- 30°latitude 8

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