On May 30 - June 1, 2018, a workshop was held at the KECK Institute for Space Studies, California Institute of Technology, to explore the interest in, and value of, a more coordinated approach among the different organizations to achieve higher value for the science and application user community. http://workshop.caltech.edu/SpaceborneSAR/index.html  Most of the organizations that are flying or developing spaceborne SAR systems participated, as well as a number of scientists and users actively involved in the field. Three working groups addressed specific topics and their observations/recommendations were resented and discussed in a plenary session. As a first follow-up the group organized a session on this subject at the LPS'19 in Milan. The aim was to raise wider awareness about the international coordination initiative, the activities of the three working groups and to give an overview on the related work.

Living Planet Symposium 2022

During last LPS22 held in Bonn, Germany in May 2022 – 9 papers have been presented during the sessions:

“E5.09.1 International Coordination for Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar Data Acquisition, Processing and Analysis for Earth Science and Applications” – see attached PDF.

Living Planet Symposium 2019

LPS19 - International Coordination for future SAR missions (1)

LPS19 - International Coordination for future SAR missions (2)

Recommendations from 2018 Workshop

The international suite of spaceborne SAR programs have significant overlap in their goals. There is strong consensus that closer coordination and collaboration will significantly enhance the overall utility of the present and planned systems for the benefit of all.

During the 2018 workshop the following recommendations were articulated by the participants:

1. Archival, present and future data should be easily and electronically accessible with a standard and common format, at little or no cost.
2. Develop a mechanism to coordinate future data acquisition and coverage by present and planned systems, as well as ground reception and processing approaches for mutual benefit.
3. Take an optimized systems approach to the overall constellation of planned and proposed missions to explore the possible mutual benefit of the total constellation coverage and capabilities.
4. Coordinate and share common test sites and sites for calibration and validation.

In order to implement these recommendations, three working groups that include radar systems experts, users, and scientists from all the involved organizations have been established.

• WG1: Present and Future Data ‐ Visibility and Access (L0‐L2)
• WG2: Future Imaging Systems ‐ Goals, Plans, Challenges and Opportunities
• WG3: Data exploration ‐ Cal/Val, Fusion and Assimilation (L3‐L4)

IGARSS 2022

During the IEEE IGARSS'22 conference in July 2022, the latest activities about this international coordination initiative were described during an oral presentation. Please see attached PDF.

IGARSS 2021

During the IEEE IGARSS'21 conference in July 2021, a special session was convened to describe the latest activities about this international coordination initiative. The list of papers is shown below and the presentations are accessible by clicking on the title:

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION OF FUTURE SPACEBORNE SAR MISSIONS - AN OVERVIEW
Maurice Borgeaud, European Space Agency (ESA), Italy; Charles Elachi, California Institute of Technology, United States

A REVIEW OF SAR OBSERVATION REQUIREMENTS FOR GLOBAL AND TARGETED SCIENCE APPLICATIONS
Ake Rosenqvist, solo Earth Observation (soloEO), Japan; Cathleen Jones, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States; Eric Rignot, University of California, Irvine, United States; Mark Simons, California Institute of Technology, United States; Paul Siqueira, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; Takeo Tadono, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

FUTURE SAR IMAGING SYSTEMS: GOALS, PLANS, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Paul Rosen, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States; Martin Suess, European Space Agency (ESA), Netherlands; Manfred Zink, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

PRESENT AND FUTURE DATA VISIBILITY AND ACCESS OF INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL SAR CONSTELLATION
Shin-ichi Sobue, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan; Gerald Bawden, NASA, United States; Raj Kumar, Indian Space Research Organisation, India; Shiro Kawakita, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan; Manil Maskey, NASA, United States; Wasanchai Vongsantivanich, GISTDA, Thailand; David Sandwell, UCSD, United States