Overview of ALOS research and science program

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) and its research activities, which are carried out at the Earth Observation Research and Application Center (EORC) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The mission objectives of ALOS include cartography, regional observation, and disaster monitoring etc. ALOS has three mission instruments, the PRISM, AVNIR-2, and PALSAR, to achieve these objectives. Our research activities can be categorized into two main parts of the ALOS mission: calibration and validation, and application and science. We are presently developing calibration and validation tools for each sensor, evaluating the pre-flight test data acquired on the ground, establishing test sites and reference facilities, and considering mission operation plans to observe the test sites effectively. The application and scientific results will demonstrate the ALOS data utilization capability. We define the digital elevation model (DEM), ortho-rectified images for each sensor, and the surface deformation map as high-level and research products. We describe here our research and scientific activities, particularly calibration and validation, to improve the absolute accuracy and image quality of the products and we provide some examples of data utilization.