Commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Trade Study
The rise of the commercial space market, Space 3.0, brought increased interest from existing and new consumers for lower cost remote sensing platforms. As the Space 3.0 market for electro-optical (EO) imagery began to mature, there was an increased demand from new modalities that could augment EO platforms such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Despite the growing interest in SAR from investors and consumers alike, the operational and financial models associated with a small satellite SAR constellation would likely differ in some aspects from their EO counterparts. As a result, CosmiQ conducted a comprehensive trade study to better quantity the performance implications and financial considerations for hypothetical small satellite constellation. Specifically, the trade study consisted of two sections. The first section simulated the collection capacity of a hypothetical small satellite SAR constellation. The second section looked at the financial implications of such a system to help determine future investment strategies.