SAR Interferometric and Tomographic Imaging of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Using Strongly Perturbed Orbits
Conference: EUSAR 2022 - 14th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
07/25/2022 - 07/27/2022 at Leipzig, Germany
Proceedings: EUSAR 2022
Pages: 5Language: englishTyp: PDF
Authors:
Benedikter, Andreas; Krieger, Gerhard (Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany & Institute of Microwaves and Photonics (LHFT), University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany)
Rodriguez-Cassola, Marc (Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany)
Hussmann, Hauke; Wickhusen, Kai; Stark, Alexander (Institute of Planetary Research, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany)
Stelzig, Michael; Vossiek, Martin (Institute of Microwaves and Photonics (LHFT), University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany)
Abstract:
In the frame of DLR’s Enceladus Explorer Initiative, we explore the potential of a SAR interferometric and tomographic orbiter for topography and deformation measurements, as well as 3-D imaging of the Enceladus ice crust. The stringent repeating ground track requirement for forming interferometric repeat-pass baselines paired with the strong gravitational perturbation by Saturn largely constrains the solutions for candidate orbits. Potential orbits have varying repeat-pass baselines between tens of meters and few kilometers. We assess the potential of a dual-frequency SAR instrument (Ka- and P-band) based on such orbits for repeat-pass SAR interferometry and tomography and provide first performance estimates.