6.0 RADARSAT Basics

What is RADARSAT?

animation showing the different parts of RADARSAT-1, Solar Array, Bus module, Payload Module, S-Band Antenna, X-Band Antenna and SAR Antenna

RADARSAT-1 Canada's premier remote sensing satellite

RADARSAT-1 is Canada's first earth-observation satellite. Its launch on Nov. 4, 1995 represented the successful outcome of a program jointly developed by the Canadian Government, provincial governments, and private industry. RADARSAT is a reliable source of data. It produces images that are useful to researchers and operational users working in such fields as:

• Arctic and off-shore surveillance,
• ice, ocean monitoring,
• geology and geologic hazard monitoring
• agriculture,
• cartography,
• hydrology,
• forestry, and
• mapping.