Overview of ALOS-2 and ALOS-3

ALOS-2 and ALOS-3 will succeed to radar and optical mission of Advanced Land Observing Satellite “Daichi” which had contributed to cartography, regional observation, disaster monitoring, and resources surveys for more than 5 years until its termination of operation in May 2011. ALOS-2 carries the state-of-the-art L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) called PALSAR-2 which succeeds to the ALOS/PALSAR with enhanced performance in both high resolution (1m * 3m at finest in the Spotlight mode) and wide swath (up to 490km in the ScanSAR wide mode). Wider bandwidth and shorter revisit time will give better conference for INSAR data analysis such as crustal deformation and deforestation. The Proto Flight Model of ALOS-2 including PALSAR-2 is under integration and testing at JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center. ALOS-3 carries the optical sensor called PRISM-2 which succeeds to the ALOS/PRISM mission with enhanced performance in high resolution (0.8 m), wide swath (50 km) and high geo-location accuracy. PRISM-2 will acquire stereo pair images with two telescopes for stereo mapping and precise Digital Surface Models. It is also considered to carry Hyper-spectral Imager Suite (HISUI), which is developed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan. JAXA has conducted the phase-A study on ALOS-3 spacecraft and mission instruments, with prototype testing of key components. This paper describes an overview of ALOS-2 and ALOS-3.