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Editorial

Ten Years of TerraSAR-X—Scientific Results

by
Michael Eineder
1,*,
Alberto Moreira
2 and
Achim Roth
3
1
Remote Sensing Technology Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Münchenerstr. 20, 82234 Wessling, Germany
2
Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Münchenerstr. 20, 82234 Wessling, Germany
3
German Remote Sensing Data Center, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Münchenerstr. 20, 82234 Wessling, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(3), 364; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030364
Submission received: 31 January 2019 / Accepted: 1 February 2019 / Published: 11 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ten Years of TerraSAR-X—Scientific Results)
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
This special issue is a collection of papers addressing the scientific utilization of data acquired in the course of the TerraSAR-X mission. The articles deal with the mission itself, the accuracy of the products, with differential interferometry, and with applications in the domains cryosphere, oceans, wetlands, and urban areas. This editorial summarizes the content.

1. Introduction

We commemorated the 10th anniversary of the TerraSAR-X mission on June 2017. TerraSAR-X is a German SAR satellite operating in X-Band. Its twin satellite TanDEM-X was launched three years later in June 2010. Both satellites serve the TerraSAR-X and the TanDEM-X missions and have provided images of superb quality since then. For the TerraSAR-X mission just one of the satellites is employed while the TanDEM-X mission always supplies a simultaneously acquired image pair, serving the goal of a global digital elevation model. The satellites were developed in the scope of a public–private partnership between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Airbus Defense and Space.
This special issue addresses the scientific utilization of data acquired in the course of the TerraSAR-X mission.

2. Peculiarities of the TerraSAR-X Mission

TerraSAR-X is characterized by numerous operational and experimental modes of its SAR instrument, unfolding a wide parameter space, e.g., multiple polarizations, along-track interferometry and a variety of SAR imaging modes with resolutions down to 0.5 m in range and 0.25 m in azimuth. Despite being well beyond their design lifetime of 5.5 years, both satellites are still fully functional, deliver high-quality images without any performance deterioration, and have enough consumables for operation into the 2020s.
From the very beginning, the high resolution data of the TerraSAR-X mission complemented the European medium resolution missions in C-Band and the Japanese L-Band missions. Not quite unexpectedly, it was especially the high resolution that revealed many new insights into SAR scattering, which led to a large number of scientific publications. The expectation that the interferometric coherence over distributed scatterers and longer time spans would be low in X-band was confirmed. But it was more than compensated by a real surprise: the high resolution and the small wavelength revealed a very high number of point-like reflectors in urban and even in natural environments, which gave rise to some ground breaking new methods such as urban SAR tomography and new applications in 3D point localization and deformation mapping of buildings and of infrastructure.

3. Contents of this Special Issue

The 20 papers of this special issue cover six major disciplines. Five papers [1,2,3,4,5] deal with interferometric applications for land surface deformation mapping. A key success factor here is the high resolution, which enables the mapping of smaller landslides, of single buildings and of infrastructure.
Another five papers [6,7,8,9,10] demonstrate the success of TerraSAR-X in the field of oceans and wetlands exploiting the high resolution and the multi-polarization capabilities of TerraSAR-X. As it turned out, not only the space segment but also the ground segment performance such as reliability and fast near real-time services contributed to the success of TerraSAR-X in maritime applications. Three papers [11,12,13] cover such operational aspects and the scientific and operational use of TerraSAR-X data.
Four papers [14,15,16,17] deal with the radiometric and geometric performance validation and with the new methods which made TerraSAR-X the first SAR sensor with geodetic accuracy. Two papers about mapping urban environments [18,19] and one about the cryosphere [20] finalize the different topics covered in this special issue.
From the 25 submissions for this special issue, 20 could be accepted and 5 had to be rejected or were withdrawn.
Of course, this collection is only a snapshot in time and many more papers have been published in the years before, demonstrating the success of this mission. A quick search for TerraSAR-X on Google scholar delivers more than 20,000 results!

4. Summary and Outlook

At the time of writing more than 235,000 individual data takes were acquired. Of those, 100,000 were initiated for scientific purposes and 1636 scientific proposals have been submitted to DLR to work with these data. Numerous scientists benefitted from TerraSAR-X which is a benchmark in geometric and radiometric accuracy—getting even better after ten years of operation.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgments

We thank all reviewers for their careful work in this review process. Finally, we thank all the authors for their submissions and the editor Nelson Peng for guiding us guest editors efficiently through the process and making this special issue possible.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

  1. Hosseini, F.; Pichierri, M.; Eppler, J.; Rabus, B. Staring Spotlight TerraSAR-X SAR Interferometry for Identification and Monitoring of Small-Scale Landslide Deformation. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 844. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  2. Rabus, B.; Pichierri, M. A New InSAR Phase Demodulation Technique Developed for a Typical Example of a Complex, Multi-Lobed Landslide Displacement Field, Fels Glacier Slide, Alaska. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 995. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  3. Tosi, L.; Lio, C.; Teatini, P.; Strozzi, T. Land Subsidence in Coastal Environments: Knowledge Advance in the Venice Coastland by TerraSAR-X PSI. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1191. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  4. Zhao, F.; Mallorqui, J.; Iglesias, R.; Gili, J.; Corominas, J. Landslide Monitoring Using Multi-Temporal SAR Interferometry with Advanced Persistent Scatterers Identification Methods and Super High-Spatial Resolution TerraSAR-X Images. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 921. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
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  7. Ermakov, S.; Sergievskaya, I.; da Silva, J.; Kapustin, I.; Shomina, O.; Kupaev, A.; Molkov, A. Remote Sensing of Organic Films on the Water Surface Using Dual Co-Polarized Ship-Based X-/C-/S-Band Radar and TerraSAR-X. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1097. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  8. Irwin, K.; Braun, A.; Fotopoulos, G.; Roth, A.; Wessel, B. Assessing Single-Polarization and Dual-Polarization TerraSAR-X Data for Surface Water Monitoring. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 949. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  9. Magalhaes, J.; da Silva, J. Internal Solitary Waves in the Andaman Sea: New Insights from SAR Imagery. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 861. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  10. Wohlfart, C.; Winkler, K.; Wendleder, A.; Roth, A. TerraSAR-X and Wetlands: A Review. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 916. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  11. Buckreuss, S.; Schättler, B.; Fritz, T.; Mittermayer, J.; Kahle, R.; Maurer, E.; Böer, J.; Bachmann, M.; Mrowka, F.; Schwarz, E.; et al. Ten Years of TerraSAR-X Operations. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 873. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  12. Lang, O.; Lumsdon, P.; Walter, D.; Anderssohn, J.; Koppe, W.; Janoth, J.; Koban, T.; Stahl, C. Development of Operational Applications for TerraSAR-X. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1535. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  13. Roth, A.; Marschalk, U.; Winkler, K.; Schättler, B.; Huber, M.; Georg, I.; Künzer, C.; Dech, S. Ten Years of Experience with Scientific TerraSAR-X Data Utilization. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1170. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  14. Balss, U.; Gisinger, C.; Eineder, M. Measurements on the Absolute 2-D and 3-D Localization Accuracy of TerraSAR-X. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 656. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  15. Cong, X.; Balss, U.; Rodriguez Gonzalez, F.; Eineder, M. Mitigation of Tropospheric Delay in SAR and InSAR Using NWP Data: Its Validation and Application Examples. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1515. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  16. Hackel, S.; Gisinger, C.; Balss, U.; Wermuth, M.; Montenbruck, O. Long-Term Validation of TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Orbit Solutions with Laser and Radar Measurements. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 762. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  17. Schwerdt, M.; Schmidt, K.; Klenk, P.; Tous Ramon, N.; Rudolf, D.; Raab, S.; Weidenhaupt, K.; Reimann, J.; Zink, M. Radiometric Performance of the TerraSAR-X Mission over More Than Ten Years of Operation. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 754. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  18. Esch, T.; Bachofer, F.; Heldens, W.; Hirner, A.; Marconcini, M.; Palacios-Lopez, D.; Roth, A.; Üreyen, S.; Zeidler, J.; Dech, S.; et al. Where We Live—A Summary of the Achievements and Planned Evolution of the Global Urban Footprint. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 895. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  19. Havivi, S.; Schvartzman, I.; Maman, S.; Rotman, S.; Blumberg, D. Combining TerraSAR-X and Landsat Images for Emergency Response in Urban Environments. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 802. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  20. Stettner, S.; Lantuit, H.; Heim, B.; Eppler, J.; Roth, A.; Bartsch, A.; Rabus, B. TerraSAR-X Time Series Fill a Gap in Spaceborne Snowmelt Monitoring of Small Arctic Catchments—A Case Study on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), Canada. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1155. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]

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MDPI and ACS Style

Eineder, M.; Moreira, A.; Roth, A. Ten Years of TerraSAR-X—Scientific Results. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 364. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030364

AMA Style

Eineder M, Moreira A, Roth A. Ten Years of TerraSAR-X—Scientific Results. Remote Sensing. 2019; 11(3):364. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030364

Chicago/Turabian Style

Eineder, Michael, Alberto Moreira, and Achim Roth. 2019. "Ten Years of TerraSAR-X—Scientific Results" Remote Sensing 11, no. 3: 364. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030364

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