INVAP (Rio Negro, Argentina) is the prime contractor for the design and construction of the SAOCOM-1 spacecraft and its SAR payload. The spacecraft platform is of SAC-C heritage. Each SAOCOM-1 spacecraft (SAOCOM-1A and SAOCOM-1B) has an estimated wet mass of ~1600 kg. The mission design life is five years.

Dimensions:

• h = 4.468 m, Ø=2.965 m stowed envelope
• 10 m x 3.5 m (35m2) SAR ActivePhase Array antenna
• 15 m2 foldable solar array wing.

RF communications: S-band for TT&C communications and X-band for SAR payload data download at a rate of 310 Mbit/s. An onboard mass memory of 256 Gbit is provided.

The mission operations for SAOCOM consists of a baseline, and foreground and background activities.

The Baseline Mission (which consists of both fixed and planned acquisitions) is based on:

• Soil moisture in the Pampa's
• SAR calibration (forest, corner reflectors distributed in different points, transponder)

The Foreground Mission involves variable acquisitions based on user requests.

Background Mission: fixed acquisitions and planned to have available useful data base

• Argentina - With applications related to Argentina's National Space Plan
• Latin-America and the rest of the world, with data acquired over areas of:
  • biomass
  • polar zones

Learn more about the SAOCOM mission in this infographic:

Learn more about SAOCOM from these related resources:

• SAOCOM on the eoPortal*
• SAOCOM document catalogue*
• SAOCOM on the Italian Space Agency website*

*The information provided is sourced and updated by external entities. For further details, please consult our Terms and Conditions page.