SARah

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SARah is a project of the German Federal Armed Forces to establish a satellite-based radar - reconnaissance system , which means Synthetic Aperture Radar technology high-resolution regardless of the current lighting and weather conditions (SAR) images of the earth's surface is to make it available. The full expansion with three satellites is planned to cost around 800 million euros.

The reconnaissance system will consist of three radar satellites and two ground stations . On July 2, 2013, the Bremen-based company OHB System AG was commissioned to develop and manufacture the system at a price of 816 million euros . Two of the SARah satellites are technically based on a further development of the reflector technology of the SAR-Lupe system of the Bundeswehr, with which the Bundeswehr has been carrying out radar reconnaissance since 2008. The third SARah satellite is based on a further development of phased array radar technology from Astrium, which has already proven itself in space . Overall, significant improvements in the performance of the overall radar reconnaissance system should be achieved.

Improvements to the previous system

The previous system, SAR-Lupe, was able to detect objects from a size of 50 cm to 1 meter. In comparison to SAR-Lupe, SARah is intended to expand the reconnaissance capabilities, in particular with regard to improved resolution of the images, expanded image size and, thanks to more memory, also enable a greater number of (images). The transmission from the satellites to the ground station, which with SAR-Lupe is often only possible with a delay of several hours when the satellite is in the vicinity of the ground station, should be accelerated with more computing capacity and facilitated by the construction of another ground station in Kiruna in northern Sweden become.

Planned start

The satellites are to be launched into sun-synchronous orbit from the US Vandenberg Air Force Base by two Falcon-9 rockets from the American company SpaceX in 2020 and / or 2021 .

Comparable radar satellites

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SARah 2 : 3.Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  2. ^ Robert Lehmann: New satellite system for the Bundeswehr , bundeswehr.de; accessed on January 8, 2015.
  3. ^ Otfried Nassauer: System "SARah": Bundeswehr plans to use new spy satellites , Spiegel Online from June 26, 2013; accessed on January 8, 2015.
  4. ↑ New reconnaissance satellites will be launched later. In: Hartpunkt.de. January 29, 2019, accessed February 7, 2019 .
  5. ↑ SPACEX IS AWARDED LAUNCH OF GERMAN RADAR RECONNAISSANCE SATELLITE SYSTEM on spacex.com from August 8, 2013; accessed on June 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ Gunter Krebs: SARah 1. In: Gunter's Space Page. October 28, 2018, accessed December 13, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Gunter Krebs: SARah 2, 3. In: Gunter's Space Page. October 24, 2018, accessed December 13, 2018 .