Entry: COSMO-SKYMED
URI: https://terra-vocabulary.org/ncl/FAIR-Incubator/earthscienceplatforms/c_5990125f
COSMO-SkyMed (Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation) is a 4-spacecraft constellation, conceived by ASI (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), and funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (MUR) and the Italian Ministry of Defense (MOD), Rome, Italy. The program is managed in cooperation by ASI and MOD. Each of the four satellites is equipped with a SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument and is capable of operating in all visibility conditions at high resolution and in real time. The overall objective of this program is global Earth observation and the relevant data exploitation for the needs of the military community as well as for the civil (institutional, commercial) community. Sample applications of COSMO-SkyMed data are seen the following fields: • Defense and security applications: Surveillance, intelligence, mapping, damage assessment, vulnerability assessment, target detection/localization • Risk management applications: Floods, droughts, landslides, volcanic/seismic, forest fire, industrial hazards, water pollution • Other applications: Marine and coastal environments, agriculture, forestry, cartography, environment, geology and exploration, telecommunication, utilities and planning • Provision of commercial imaging services • The high revisit frequency offered by the four X-band SAR spacecraft is also expected to provide a unique potential to the operational meteorological user community through provision of ancillary data and/or data on meteo-correlated phenomena, in particular as regards sea ice monitoring and study of ocean wave patterns.