Research on Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Moon-Based SAR Earth Observation

Abstract

With the rapid development of lunar exploration, the concept of moon-based observation of earth has received more and more attention. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) deployed on the moon for earth observation can obtain continuous observations of large areas on earth surface, and realize a single wide-area observation mode which makes up for the deficiency of space-borne SAR. Based on the JPL ephemeris data, in this paper the observation difference of moon-based SAR in different scenarios such as time domain and space domain was analyzed, and the simulation of SAR echo was completed using the actual earth-moon spatial relationship. The results show that the moon-based SAR can always find the intersection line of zero Doppler plane on earth surface, and long-term, large-scale periodic observations can be achieved. The SAR echo simulation verifies its feasibility. The study of moon-based SAR observations can provide a basis for follow-up studies such as surface tidal movement and polar sea ice rebound.

Keywords

Moon-based observation of Earth / synthetic aperture radar / spatial relations / zero Doppler plane