Operating the X-band SAR interferometer of the SRTM

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is the first single pass SAR (synthetic aperture radar) interferometer in space; it has been flown on board the Space Shuttle in February 2000. The mission objective was to acquire a radar data set during this 11 day mission which allows one to generate a new consistent and more accurate global digital terrain model and topographic maps of all land surfaces between +60/spl deg/ and -56/spl deg/ latitudes. The operations concept and the gained experience from the successful mission is presented.