Overview of the Japanese Advanced Optical Satellite: mission objectives, a satellite system and an onboard imager

摘要

The Japanese Advanced Optical Satellite (called "ALOS-3") is a successor of the optical mission of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) "DAICHI" (2006-2011). The main objectives of the ALOS-3 project are to take images of the global land area with high GSD (<1 m) and wide swath (>70 km), and build a large image database to prepare for disasters, etc. By extracting the difference before and after the disaster, the situation of the damage would be grasped quickly. ALOS-3 also contribute to maintenance and update of the geospatial information of all over the world. The satellite has capabilities to take stereo images, thus the Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the interested area would also be provided. The data which will be acquired by ALOS-3 is expected to be useful in various social needs. ALOS-3 is scheduled to be launch in FY2020.