The Synthetic Aperture Radar Virtual Constellation (SAR-VC) was created in November 2026, formalising the successful International Coordination Group for Spaceborne SAR (ICGS-SAR) within the CEOS framework.
Mission
To coordinate observations from space-borne SAR missions and facilitate planning of future missions to optimize global coverage and ensure continuity across all frequency bands and modalities.
Objectives
- Coordinate acquisition plans to improve collection of spatially gap-free and temporally dense SAR data sets by multiple missions operating at all available SAR frequency bands with the goal to:
- Improve scientific and application value and efficiency (e.g., common areas targeted for campaigns or disjoint areas where multiple coverage would be redundant).
- Support response to natural disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, typhoons/cyclones/hurricanes and floods, as well as manmade disasters such as oil spills.
- Assess how to maximize scientific/user exploitation of present and planned SAR missions (for example, open data for scientific research, expanded ground receiving stations).
- Review planned SAR missions across all frequency bands to identify critical gaps.
- Follow and leverage new trends in spaceborne SAR missions (e.g. multistatic, constellations, micro-SAR, PolSAR/PolInSAR) to further science and applications goals of agencies.
- Identify challenges and opportunities in leveraging all spaceborne SAR systems to achieve scientific application objectives.
- Identify critical techniques and technologies which are relevant for current and future missions and coordinate agency development strategies.
- Coordinate and further develop CEOS Analysis Ready Data (CEOS-ARD) Product Family Specifications (PFS) for SAR products.
- Coordinate with the CEOS Working Group on Information System and Services (WGISS) regarding data interoperability and sharing.
- Coordinate with the CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) SAR Subgroup regarding calibration and validation activities from imagery through science and applications products.
- Engage and coordinate with the commercial SAR sector on all above aspects.
More about SAR-VC can be found in the below documents:
If you would like to participate in SAR-VC – please fill out the below form to join one of the subgroups:
Leadership
SAR-VC is currently led by:
- Paul Rosen, NASA/JPL
- Malcolm Davidson, ESA
- Takeo Tadono, JAXA
- Elizabeth Nuncio Quiroz, DLR