Application of S-Band Novasar-1 to Bushfires in Australia

The NovaSAR-1 S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission is an international partnership designed to offer a new source of satellite SAR imagery. Australia has secured a 10% capacity share in this mission, providing the nation with a first-ever sovereign civilian EO satellite capability. One objective of Australia's involvement in this mission is the use of the data for natural hazard applications - predominantly the mapping and assessment of bushfires and floods. Full operations of NovaSAR-1 commenced in December 2019, and over the first 12 months of operations, several natural hazard events have been investigated with this new satellite capability. Here we present initial observations from three bushfires in Eastern Australia: Jervis Bay, Tumbarumba and Fraser Island. In doing so we compare S-band NovaSAR-1 and C-band Sentinel-1 SAR imagery, using Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery as a source of validation information in the absence of ground-truth data. NovaSAR-1 is the only spaceborne S-band SAR in operation, and data acquired under Australia's share of the mission will be made free and open-access to the international community, as described here, to stimulate further use of these data for hazard and other applications.