RADARSAT Antarctica Mapping System: system overview

In October 1996, RADARSAT will map the entire Antarctic continent from space, presenting scientists with an unprecedented snapshot of the entire continent in the microwave spectrum. NASA has charged the Byrd Polar Research Center with the goal of producing a full continental map using this data, subject to a number of constraints to maximize the utility of the data to the scientific community. To meet these requirements, a number of SAR data processing techniques shall be applied including orthorectification processing, block adjustments for ephemeris refinements, simulation techniques and radiometric balancing for automated image seam removal. These techniques shall be implemented in the RADARSAT Antarctica Mapping System being developed by Vexcel Corporation for the Byrd Polar Research Center. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the system.