TanDEM-X Mission Status and Final DEM Performance

Abstract

The TanDEM-X mission has opened a new era in spaceborne radar remote sensing. Its primary objective, the acquisition and generation of a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with 12 m horizontal resolution and 2 m relative height accuracy, has been completed in autumn 2016. Since the end of 2010 the two twin synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X have been flying in a controlled close orbit formation. The resulting large single-pass SAR interferometer allowed to map the complete Earth’s land surface at least twice. Once the acquisition of the data set for the generation of the global DEM has been completed, the flexibility offered by both SAR instruments in terms of imaging, interferometric, and polarization modes, has been further exploited to serve several secondary mission objectives based on along-track interferometry as well as new bistatic SAR techniques. In this paper, we present the actual status and activities within the mission and the quality assessment of the TanDEM-X final global DEM.