Close Formation Flight of Passive Receiving Micro-Satellites

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry is a powerful technique for deriving highly accurate digital elevation models on a global scale. To keep costs low, receive only satellites have been proposed to fly in close formation with an illuminating radar satellite. A new formation, called Trinodal Pendulum, is introduced and described in detail. Results of a performance estimation, flight dynamics analysis, and safety investigation are presented adopting this formation to the planned TerraSAR-L satellite. It is shown, that a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) according to the High Resolution Terrain Information (HRTI) level 3 standard can be derived within less than 1½ years.