First of all, congratulations on all the work you have put in and the upcoming launch! The advances in remote sensing are so exciting and I can’t wait to see how much we will learn from this and other similar endeavors.
Few questions about the radar side of things. In the link it states that SWOT will be using a nadir altimeter and two side-looking antenna to form a 2d scene from a one dimensional orbit. How much of a concern will the height variation that comes from waves be for your backscatter calculations to accurately form that footprint? It also states that the goal here is to get much higher resolution data than previously available. What kind of resolution performance are you expecting? And finally, what kind of processing will be necessary to remove any Doppler effects coming from satellite motion?
grizonyourface t1_ivkw5vv wrote
Reply to AskScience AMA Series: We're NASA experts working on SWOT - an upcoming mission that will observe nearly all water on Earth's surface. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator
First of all, congratulations on all the work you have put in and the upcoming launch! The advances in remote sensing are so exciting and I can’t wait to see how much we will learn from this and other similar endeavors.
Few questions about the radar side of things. In the link it states that SWOT will be using a nadir altimeter and two side-looking antenna to form a 2d scene from a one dimensional orbit. How much of a concern will the height variation that comes from waves be for your backscatter calculations to accurately form that footprint? It also states that the goal here is to get much higher resolution data than previously available. What kind of resolution performance are you expecting? And finally, what kind of processing will be necessary to remove any Doppler effects coming from satellite motion?