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The highly capable Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite
Commercial users require detailed data adapted to their individual requirements, available quickly and reliably, independent of daylight and weather conditions. This is exactly what TerraSAR-X offers. Data from Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) are particularly suitable for commercial exploration. The SAR instruments supply extremely detailed radar images, day and night, in all weather, which are the basis for a wide variety of products and services, such as highly sophisticated client-specific image interpretation, maps, databases and analysis much in demand for a wide scope of applications. Sectors include environmental planning, land use and natural resource exploration, regional and urban development, catastrophe response and relief, insurance and risk, security and defence, etc.
New-quality data records, as provided by TerraSAR-X, will also offer a vast amount of new research incentives, for instance in ecology, geology, hydrology and oceanography. The smallest movements of the Earth's surface (plate tectonics, volcanism, earthquake) are further scientific fields of application.
TerraSAR-X is the first German space project implemented under a Public–Private Partnership. Cooperation partners are the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and Astrium. The DLR will be responsible for the scientific use of the TerraSAR-X data, whereas commercial marketing will be undertaken exclusively by Infoterra GmbH, a wholly-owned Astrium subsidiary specialising in the collection and processing of air- and satellite-based data.