Abstract

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) was launched on January 24, 2006. Since then, it has been operated successfully on orbit, delivering a variety of high-resolution images in numerous quantities and contributing to disaster management support many times. ALOS is a JAXA's flagship for high-resolution Earth observation. It is the Earth observation satellite that is capable of attaining conflicting goals: global data collection and high resolution (2.5m). To attain these goals, a variety of platform and mission technologies were developed. In particular, high-resolution optical sensor technology, phased-array synthetic aperture radar technology, precision attitude and position determination and control technology, and high-speed data handling technology were developed. This paper gives an overview of the ALOS mission and spacecraft with a particular emphasis on the critical platform and mission technologies. This also reviews the last 31 months' operations and on-orbit status of the ALOS spacecraft with the flight data analysis. The assessment and calibration of the mission-related platform performances such as orbit determination and control accuracies, attitude determination and control accuracies, attitude stability, and pixel geolocation determination accuracy are also reported along with our efforts to improve these performances.

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