Future Spaceborne SAR Technologies and Mission Concepts

In the last decade we entered into a golden age for spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems with the number of satellites increasing in a quasi-exponential way. The reason is obvious: SAR data utilization and associated services are making a most important contribution in addressing societal challenges of global dimension since spaceborne SAR is the only sensor technology that is able to provide high-resolution images on a global scale independent of weather conditions and sunlight illumination. This paper provides a short overview on the latest developments including new technologies and progress on digital beamforming in azimuth and elevation, bistatic and multistatic mission concepts as well as NewSpace SAR satellites.