ALOS-1 - Earth Online

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Cloud-free collections key for land monitoring

Satellite imagery is a crucially important tool for monitoring the land, but cloud cover can often block parts of Earth’s surface from view, limiting subsequent analyses.

ALOS PRISM L1C European Coverage Cloud Free data collection now available for users

As part of Earthnet’s Third Party Missions Programme framework, ESA is pleased to announce that the ALOS PRISM L1C European Coverage Cloud Free data collection is now available for research purposes.

Meet the Quality Assurance for EO Team

The Quality Assurance For Earth Observation (also known as QA4EO) Service began its operations on 1 November 2019, providing support to the Data Quality and Algorithms Management Office at ESRIN, within the Sensor Performance, Processing and Algorithm section.

Long-term data: Summarising ESA’s Heritage missions

ESA’s Heritage Space Programme preserves data from non-operational missions. Learn more about the Heritage missions in this video.

Meet a young researcher who studies the behaviour of volcanoes worldwide

Researcher Camila Novoa Lizama, of the University of Leeds, recently analysed how the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery over the Puyehue Cordón-Caulle Volcanic Complex, in Chile, acquired by ALOS-1, Envisat and the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, helped her team to better comprehend the temporal and spatial behaviour of ground displacements before, during and after the volcano’s last eruption.

About ALOS-1

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-1) was a Japanese Earth-imaging satellite from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that launched on 24 January 2006 and completed its operational phase on 12 May 2011 after failing due to a power anomaly.

ALOS-1 is part of ESA's Third Party Missions Programme, in which ESA has an agreement with JAXA to distribute data products from the mission.

ALOS-1 Objectives

The ALOS-1 mission objectives were:

Providing its user community with data of sufficient resolution to be able to generate 1:25,000 scale maps
Developing Digital Elevation Models and related geographic data products
Performing regional observation to aid sustainable development goals
Surveying natural resources
Develop sensor and satellite technology for future Earth-observation missions
Disaster monitoring around the world.

ALOS-1 Instruments

PRISM instrument — The **Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM)** was a panchromatic radiometer with 2.5 m spatial resolution at nadir. Its extracted data was designed to provide highly accurate digital surface models (DSM).
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PALSAR instrument — The **Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR)** was a successor sensor to the SAR on-board JERS-1 with more advanced functions such as higher spatial resolution and ScanSAR mode.

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The **Advanced Visible and Near-Infrared Radiometer-2 (AVNIR-2)** was a four band (visible and near-infrared) radiometer with a resolution of 10 m, designed for observing land and coastal zones.

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The ALOS-1 instruments were capable of observing the entire surface of the Earth:

Any place within two days
Around the equator: about 60% of the area within one day
At latitudes of 35°: about 70% of the area within one day
At latitudes above 55°: any place every day (provided there is no cloud cover for the optical instruments)

Night-time observation modes: PALSAR (Note: AVNIR-2 and PALSAR are able to operate simultaneously).

PALSAR calibration is provided with PARC (Polarimetric Active Radar Calibrator) as well as by other means.

Non-scientific measuring instruments:

AOCS (Attitude Orbit and Control System)
RRA (RetroReflector Array)
SST (Star Tracker)

ALOS-1 Data

DATA DESCRIPTION

Through the Online Dissemination server, ESA offers registered users access to the following data collections:

ALOS-1 INSTRUMENTS

ALOS-1 DATA