ALOS Data

The Japanese Earth observation satellite ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) has been successfully launched on January 24, 2006. On October 24, nine months after orbital testing, the satellite started to operate at full throttle. Three sensors are installed onboard this satellite, enabling to receive panchromatic (PRISM) and multispectral (AVNIR-2) optical and radar (PALSAR) data.

The unique feature of PRISM sensor ((Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping) is in its capability of getting triplets, supported by three independent optical systems for viewing nadir, forward and backward. Panchromatic stereoscopic images with 2.5 m resolution are mostly used for mapping, town planning, DEM and 3D modeling. The second AVNIR-2 camera (Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2) is used to get multi-spectral images in visible and near infrared bands at 10 m resolution that can be used in small-scale mapping, forestry and agriculture, etc. PALSAR synthetic aperture radar (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) delivers telemetry in three modes from 7 to 100 m resolution and the swath of 20 to 350 km. Main application areas for radar data are: observation of flooding and freshets, oil spills, surface deformation, ship detection, biomass volume assessment, etc.

ALOS program applies pre-scheduled imaging plan pattern aimed at multiple global coverage of the Earth surface. This strategy becomes inferior only in case of emergencies. End-users may order ALOS images from archive, however image tasking in near real-time mode is practically unavailable.

In December 2007, ScanEx R&D Center signed an agreement with RESTEC (Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan), entitling ScanEx to distribute ALOS images to the users in Russia and CIS. Following the agreement with the Japanese JAXA Space Agency, the owner of the satellite, RESTEC was granted the rights to receive, process and distribute ALOS data.