HRWS: The upcoming German X-Band Spaceborne SAR Mission

Abstract

This paper presents the High-Resolution Wide-Swath (HRWS) mission as the next German civilian spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system for earth observation in X-Band. Following the successful path of the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X missions, HRWS is designed to guarantee the X-band data and service continuity for institutional, scientific and commercial users well beyond the year 2030. HRWS is a very innovative multistatic SAR mission exploiting the formation flight of one active main satellite and three smaller passive companion satellites. With HRWS the novel MirrorSAR concept will be implemented in space for the first time. The HRWS mission has been approved for realization in December 2020 and, as for the current planning, the launch is expected in the time frame of 2026/2027. This paper presents an overview of the outstanding capabilities and new technologies of HRWS, including F-SCAN, digital beamforming, hybrid agility, and single-pass dual-baseline interferometry, as well as the various fields of applications.