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Technology of ALOS -going on the cutting edge.

"A" for ALOS stands for "Advanced".
As the word means, ALOS has three high performance sensors that were developed by integrating the modern technology to observe land of the earth. These sensors enable to collect ultimately accurate measurement data, which thought to be difficult for current observing satellites to obtain.

General Concepts of "Three Sensors"

ALOS has three remote-sensing instruments, PRISM is a panchromatic radiometer with spatial resolution in order to obtain terrain data including elevation. AVNIR-2 is a visible and near-infrared radiometer for observing land and coastal zones and provides better spatial resolution. PALSAR is a phased array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, an active microwave sensor for cloud free and day and night land observation.

 

Sensor
Spatial Resolution /
Swath Width
Characteristics

Utilization

PRISM

Spatial Resolution : 2.5ｍ
Swath Width : 35km（Triplet mode）
70km（Nadir Only）

It has three independent optical systems for viewing nadir, forward and backward producing a stereoscopic image along the satellite’s track.

Cartography, making DSM for mapping, urban planning, agriculture, forest monitoring, coastal monitorig, monitoring illegal dumping, flood monitoring etc.

AVNIR-2

Spatial Resolution : 10ｍ

Swath Width : 70ｋｍ

The Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2) is a visible and near infrared radiometer for observing land and coastal zones.

It provides better spatial land-coverage maps、wide range of urban planning, agriculture(vegetation research), forest monitoring, coastal monitoring, pollution monitoring on ports and harbors, plants monitoring, flood monitoring etc.

PALSAR

Spatial Resolution : 10ｍ（fine resolution mode）
100ｍ（Scan Sar mode）

Observation Swath : 70ｋｍ（fine mode）
250～350ｋｍ（Scan SAR）


The Phased Array Type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) is an active microwave sensor using L-band frequency, which can observe with fine resolution in a conventional mode as well as wider swath with a SAR images.

It enables to make DEM、extract topography data by interferometry, estimate biomass, forest monitoring, agriculture, monitoring oil spill, moisture of soil, shipping inspection　etc.

Click here for details of each three sensor.
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