Distributed Aperture Radar Tomographic Sensors (DARTS) to Map Surface Topography and Vegetation Structure

Distributed Aperture Radar Tomographic Sensors (DARTS) is a mission concept being studied at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in collaboration with the California Institute of Technology to enable global and repeated imaging of surface topography and three-dimensional vegetation structure using single-pass tomographic SAR technique. The observing system consists of a distributed formation of multiple small synthetic aperture radar platforms deployed in space with variable distances to achieve look angle diversity and sensitivity to the vertical distribution of vegetation components. Our goal is to identify the optimal system configuration starting from documented community needs and mature the critical technologies that lead to a viable implementation of DARTS. Here, we provide an overview of DARTS and describe our approach for designing and demonstrating single-pass SAR tomographic systems as part of an on-going funded NASA Instrument Incubator Program effort.