PARIS – Synthetic aperture radar constellations are expanding in response to growing public and private demand.

In August, Finland-based Iceye launched four radar satellites. Japan’s Synspective sent aloft its fifth SAR satellite. And U.S.-based Capella Space added two satellites to its constellation.

National security and defense organizations remain the dominant customers for SAR imagery and data.

“From a national security perspective, our systems are used seven days a week, 24 hours a day on a continuous basis,” Capella Space CEO Frank Backes said Sept. 20 at World Space Business Week here.

The satellites Capella launched in August were calibrated and brought online quickly. Capella was intent on showing the defense customers that satellites can be brought into operations in “a couple of days rather than weeks, months or even longer,” Backes said.

Increasingly, civil government agencies and companies are recognizing the value of SAR, which provides data during the day, at night, through clouds and smoke.

In September, NASA announced plans to bring data from Iceye US into its Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition program. Prior to awarding Iceye a five-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract scientists evaluated how well Iceye’s SAR data supported NASA Earth Science research.

Soil Moisture

Utilities, infrastructure companies and government agencies also are turning to SAR for help detecting soil moisture.

“Water where it shouldn’t be is the number one reason for infrastructure failure,” said Jasmin Inbar, Asterra vice president and head of Earth observation. Asterra applies algorithms to L-band SAR data to create information products for insurance companies, infrastructure operators and disaster-management agencies.

To attract new customers, Asterra will need access to more frequent observations.

“There are only three L-band satellites operated by space agencies,” Inbar said. “In order to penetrate better into the defense market, we need higher revisit time.”

Scaling Up Production

With funds raised in a recent Series C round, Synspective is ramping up satellite production, said Synspective CEO Motoyuki Ara. The company intends to operate a constellation of 30 SAR satellites by the late 2020s.