Radar, long viewed in the remote sensing community as an esoteric system, is rapidly coming of age with the large number of hardcopy images and digital data sets being made available from various satellite platforms and with applications to a wide range of Earth resource problems. The decade of the 1990s has seen major changes in radar remote sensing with the launching of a series of satellites dedicated to this type of technology. In May 1991, Russia launched Almaz, an Earth obersvation satellite equipped with an S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor. In July 1991, the European Space Agency placed in orbit its first ERS satellite with a C-band SAR system, and in February 1992, the Japanese put into operation the JERS-1 satellite carrying an L-band SAR unit. In 1996, Canada launched RADARSAT. From 1993 through 1996, U.S. Shuttle missons used SAR sensors in C-, L-, and X-bands. As the table below illustrates additional satellite platforms are planned through the first decade of the 21st century. Images from these various satellites are now making their ways down into the classrooms at all levels. The main purpose of this home page is to make instructors aware of some of the instructional materials available for introducing radar remote sensing into their curriculum and to provide to teachers with radar images which they may wish to incorporate into their geography instruction.

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