The advantage of ENVISAT ASAR over its predecessors, namely ERS-1 and ERS-2, as a land observation tool resides in its multiple polarization and multi-look angle capabilities. As a radar sensor the ASAR backscattering coefficient is sensitive to the moisture content of the scattering media and its geometrical properties (i.e. size, shape, roughness, and orientation). From the quantitative analy...

Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) systems successfully measure attitude and spin period of Envisat. During the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) campaign the SLR stations observed the satellite and provided measurements that allow determination of the attitude and the spin period of Envisat during year 2013. The spin parameters of the spacecraft are stable within a coordinate system fixed ...

ENVISAT carries a new generation radar altimeter (RA-2) and a microwave radiometer (MWR). RA-2 provides improved measurement performances and many new capabilities, which will benefit the science and application community. With almost two decades of altimetric measurements acquired by ESA, long-term evolution of parameters playing a key role in climate change can be addressed. This requires hom...

The European satellite ENVISAT, following the previous ERS-1 and 2 will hold out some new features. Among those, the RA-2 altimeter will work, as previously, at 2 frequencies, but, if the Ku-band will still remain, the C-band will change for the S-band. The OSCAR project [1] concerns the use of the ENVISAT altimeter for exploring the potential of the nadir looking S-band for studying the ice sh...

The main objective of this work is to design automatic detection procedures for oil spill in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data. In doing so the genetic algorithm tool was designed to investigate the occurrence of using ENVISAT and RADARSAT-2 SAR satellite data. The study shows that genetic algorithm provides accurate pattern of oil slick in SAR data. This shown by 90% for oil spill,...

Space borne radar data facilitates continuous monitoring of almost any location on the earth (limitations in polar zones) with quite low costs. Almost weather-independent operation of radar systems enables a reliable and continuous record of data from earth’s surface. In the framework of an ESA pilot project (AO335), ENVISAT polarimetric SAR data of years 2004 and 2005 are examined for their us...