STAR concept for passive microwave temperature sounding from middle earth orbit (MeoSTAR)

A future mission for a new microwave atmospheric temperature sounder radiometer in a middle Earth orbit (MEO) at 11,000 km altitude is described. The MeoSTAR design uses a stationary 1-dimensional Synthetic Thinned Array Radiometer in the 50-60 GHz microwave sounding band, to provide a "pushbroom" image as the satellite orbits. The advantage of this concept is an image with a high spatial resolution and a wide swath with no scanning antenna to disturb the visual and IR sensors on the same satellite

[1]  J. R. Piepmeier,et al.  Hybrid synthetic/real aperture antenna for high resolution microwave imaging , 2003, IGARSS 2003. 2003 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. Proceedings (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37477).