Introduction: The Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility special section

Abstract

In 1985 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the University of Alaska agreed to implement, at the Geophysical Institute of the Fairbanks campus, a facility dedicated to the acquisition, processing, distribution, and archival of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to be downlinked from satellites. Since then, the Alaska SAR Facility (ASF) has been an active part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. ASF Program goals were outlined by Carsey et al. [1987].Plans were put in place to support three satellites, and the first two, the First European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS 1) (launched in My 1991) and the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS 1) (launched in February 1992) are presently in orbit and are being supported by ASF. The third, the Canadian RADARSAT, is scheduled for launch in the spring of 1995. Future satellite missions by U.S. or foreign agencies may well be added in time.