Study into critical issues of the fame mission

Abstract

This document describes the results of research activities related to critical issues of the FA^ffi mission, carried out by NLR. FAME constitutes a dedicated infrastructure, consisting of a space segment and a ground segment, for the global monitoring of forests. The space segment is a single-mission satellite carrying a Synthetic Aperture Radar sensor. Recorded SAR data are transmitted directly to the ground over a low-rate data channel and received by multiple low-cost end-user stations. The work covered by this report comprises the following subjects: •Applicability of operational and future payloads for global forestry monitoring. •Data rate reduction techniques. •Orbit analysis.