The Geostationary Synthetic Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR) was conceived to fill a gap in our Earth remote sensing capabilities - the lack of a microwave atmospheric sounder in geostationary orbit. This capability is highly desired because of the advantageous observing point GEO offers, with continuous views of the entire visible Earth disc - crucial for observation of hurricanes and other rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena. The GeoSTAR concept is a radical departure from the conventional way of constructing a microwave sounding radiometer, which typically uses a scanning parabolic reflector that focuses a narrow receiving "beam" into a single receiver. Instead, the STAR approach is to use a 2-D array of a large number of receivers to synthesize a large aperture and operate the system as a spatial interferometer that images the scene in two dimensions without requiring scanning. Such systems have been investigated before, and the European Space Agency is developing a soil moisture satellite mission based on this concept, but none had been adequately demonstrated either on the ground or in space. This is a perfect case for a prototyping effort. An effort has been under way at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the last 3-4 years to build a GeoSTAR prototype and demonstrate that the 2-D STAR approach works. The prototype, which is a moderate-aperture implementation of a fully functional temperature sounder, was completed in early 2005 and has since undergone a number of tests.
Prototyping a New Earth Observing Sensor - GeoSTAR
2007-03-01
2046845 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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