Sea-Ice Mission Requirements for the US FIREX and Canada RADARSAT programs

A bilateral synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite program is defined. The studies include addressing the requirements supporting a SAR mission posed by a number of disciplines including science and operations in sea ice covered waters. Sea ice research problems such as ice information and total mission requirements, the mission components, the radar engineering parameters, and an approach to the transition of spacecraft SAR from a research to an operational tool were investigated.