Da­ta ac­cess and prod­ucts

The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X
The Ger­man radar satel­lite Ter­raSAR-X
Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X

Five years ago, at 04:14 CEST on 15 June 2007, the Ger­man Ter­raSAR-X radar satel­lite was launched from Rus­sia's Baikonur Cos­mod­rome in Kaza­khstan. This marked the be­gin­ning of a new era in satel­lite re­mote sens­ing for Ger­many. De­signed to op­er­ate for five years, the satel­lite has now com­plet­ed its nom­i­nal ser­vice life but it re­mains in ex­cel­lent con­di­tion; the space­craft is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing for sev­er­al more years.

Data policy

The terms for TerraSAR-X data utilisation depend on the envisaged application:

  • The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), as the representative of the German state, remains the owner of the TerraSAR-X data and coordinates its scientific utilisation. Scientists are invited to submit proposals to DLR via the Science Team Portal (see link in right-hand column). Detailed information about the application procedure and the terms of data utilisation can be retrieved from there. For accepted proposals, data sets will be provided under COFUR (Cost Of Fulfilling User Request) conditions.
  • EADS Astrium is responsible for the development of a commercial service for the commercialisation of TerraSAR-X data and products through Infoterra GmbH, its wholly-owned subsidiary.
  • DLR provides, through this web portal, image galleries (see links in right-hand column), offering downloadable high quality imagery and animations for the use in the public media.

Base products

The base level products comprise simple image products, where scanning mode, polarization and geometric projection can be specified by the customer according to their needs. Orders can be placed for items from the current catalogue as well as for images to be recorded in the future. The following base products are available for the four recording modes; StripMap, ScanSAR, SpotLight, high-resolution SpotLight:

  • Single-look complex products in slant range projection (SSC)
  • Multi-look detected products in ground range projection (MGD)
  • Geocoded ellipsoid-corrected products in UTM/UPS projection (GEC)
  • Enhanced ellipsoid-corrected products in UTM/UPS projection (EEC)
Contact
  • Elke Heinemann
    Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (DLR)
    Ger­man Space Agen­cy at DLR
    Com­mu­ni­ca­tions & Me­dia Re­la­tions
    Telephone: +49 228 447-379
    Königswinterer Straße 522-524
    53227 Bonn
    Contact
  • Dr.-Ing. Stefan Buckreuß
    Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (DLR)
    Mi­crowaves and Radar In­sti­tute
    Münchener Straße 20
    82234 Oberpfaffenhofen-Weßling
    Contact

Main menu