Status of the advanced land observing satellite-2 (ALOS-2) and its follow-on L-band SAR mission

Abstract

This paper introduces the operational status of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) and its follow-on L-band SAR mission in Japan. ALOS-2 observes the earth surface with the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2) that is effectively used for many applications such as land deformation mapping and forest change mapping. To keep and enhance the applications using PALSAR-2 data, JAXA plans to launch a successor satellite to the ALOS-2 in Japanese Fiscal Year 2020. The concepts of the ALOS-2 follow-on are expanding swath width and increasing observation frequency while keeping high spatial resolution of the PALSAR-2 for improving the response of disaster monitoring, early detection of anomalies on the earth surface, and enabling time-series interferometric SAR (INSAR) analysis.