Five years ago, at 04:14 CEST on 15 June 2007, the German TerraSAR-X radar satellite was launched from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This marked the beginning of a new era in satellite remote sensing for Germany. Designed to operate for five years, the satellite has now completed its nominal service life but it remains in excellent condition; the spacecraft is expected to continue operating for several more years.
The terms for TerraSAR-X data utilisation depend on the envisaged application:
The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), as the representative of the German state, remains the owner of the TerraSAR-X data and coordinates its scientific utilisation. Scientists are invited to submit proposals to DLR via the Science Team Portal (see link in right-hand column). Detailed information about the application procedure and the terms of data utilisation can be retrieved from there. For accepted proposals, data sets will be provided under COFUR (Cost Of Fulfilling User Request) conditions.
EADS Astrium is responsible for the development of a commercial service for the commercialisation of TerraSAR-X data and products through Infoterra GmbH, its wholly-owned subsidiary.
DLR provides, through this web portal, image galleries (see links in right-hand column), offering downloadable high quality imagery and animations for the use in the public media.
Base products
The base level products comprise simple image products, where scanning mode, polarization and geometric projection can be specified by the customer according to their needs. Orders can be placed for items from the current catalogue as well as for images to be recorded in the future. The following base products are available for the four recording modes; StripMap, ScanSAR, SpotLight, high-resolution SpotLight:
Single-look complex products in slant range projection (SSC)
Multi-look detected products in ground range projection (MGD)
Geocoded ellipsoid-corrected products in UTM/UPS projection (GEC)
Enhanced ellipsoid-corrected products in UTM/UPS projection (EEC)
