Milestone-Proposal:Orbital X-Band Real-Aperture Side-Looking Radar of Cosmos-1500, 1983
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Docket #:2024-28
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To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No
Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes
Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes
Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes
Was it of at least regional importance? Yes
Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes
Has the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) will be located agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes
Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes
Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes
Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:
1983-1986
Title of the proposed milestone:
Orbital X-Band Real-Aperture Side-Looking Radar of Cosmos-1500, 1983
Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance: Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons.
In 1983 - 1986, orbital X-band real-aperture side-looking radar of Cosmos-1500 spacecraft was operational. Designed by the team led by Anatoly Kalmykov at the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics NASU in Kharkiv, Ukraine, it was a pioneering achievement in oceanography from space. Radar highlighted invaluable opportunities of orbital microwave imagery in the study of ocean waving and atmospheric phenomena and provision of safe navigation in Arctic and Antarctic.
200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.
The X-band real-aperture side-looking radar of the Cosmos-1500 spacecraft was placed into orbit in 1983 and worked for 3 years. This was the first space radar of that type, providing an order wider swath than preceding Seasat synthetic-aperture radar, at the expense of the lower resolution. Additionally, it generated microwave images on board and delivered them directly to the users via a dedicated radio-frequency channel. It was conceived and designed by the team led by Anatoly Kalmykov at the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics NASU in Kharkiv. This radar sensor system, operational at the 650-km polar orbit, was aimed at research into ocean waving, icing, and storm tracking. However, its most remarkable and broadly covered impact was the provision of safe navigation in Arctic and Antarctic, especially in the polar night conditions, due to steady flow of the moderate-resolution microwave images of the sea ice and free water areas. This resulted in two successful rescue operations performed by the icebreakers equipped with the receivers of orbital data. At all stages of the radar development and operation, Kalmykov played crucial role, spearheading his team efforts and overcoming the technical and political obstacles. Due to success of that system, the same radar was later produced in small series in Ukraine and used at six USSR/Russian and two Ukrainian ocean-sensing spacecraft until 2004. This led to establishment of Ukraine as a nation, able to develop orbital radar sensor systems, and highlighted invaluable opportunities of orbital microwave imagery in oceanography and polar navigation.
IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.
IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?
IEEE Ukraine Section
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):
Unit: IEEE Ukraine Section
Senior Officer Name: Ievgen Pichkalov
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:
Unit: IEEE Ukraine Section (East) AP/MTT/ED/AES/GRS/NPS Societies Joint Chapter
Senior Officer Name: Alexander Nosich
Unit: IEEE Ukraine Section
Senior Officer Name: Ievgen Pichkalov
IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):
IEEE Section: IEEE Ukraine Section
IEEE Section Chair name: Iryna Ivasenko
Milestone proposer(s):
Proposer name: Alexander Nosich
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Proposer name: Ganna Veselovska-Maiboroda
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.
Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):
Place for installation of the plaque: O.Ya. Usikov Institute for Radiophysics and Electronics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine 12, Ac. Proskura st., Kharkiv, 61085, Ukraine GPS coordinates: 50.045739620149405, 36.29124302987214
Place of installation of the duplicate plaque: Borys Paton State Polytechnic Museum 37-E (Building 6), Beresteysky Avenue, Kyiv, 03056, Ukraine GPS coordinates: 50.44871788288171, 30.460461839366783
Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.
Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. The plaque is supposed to be placed on the building of the O.Ya. Usikov Institute for Radiophysics and Electronics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine.
Are the original buildings extant?
Yes, the original building still extant. Although Russian missile attacks partially and non-critically damaged the building.
Details of the plaque mounting:
We plan to mounting the plaque on the outside of the building, at the entrance to the building.
How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?
The plaque will be open to everyone, and there will be security at the Institute.
Who is the present owner of the site(s)?
O.Ya. Usikov Institute for Radiophysics and Electronics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine
What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include justification here. (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)
The application has been reviewed and approved by the IEEE Ukraine Section History Activities Committee (Chair: Ievgen Pichkalov).
Justification for Inclusion of Name in the Citation:
The central role in the invention, design and development of the orbital RA-SLR of Cosmos-1500 was played by Professor A. Kalmykov. This view is supported at the official websites of both NASA [1] and ESA [2] and early-1990s reports of the US strategists in space collaboration [3]. Besides, it follows from both the comprehensive reviews on this system where Kalmykov is the primary author [4, 5] and international textbooks [6]. Other examples of historical evidence are found in retrospective reviews of the former Kalmykov team members [7, 8].
Historical significance of the work:
RA-SLR of Cosmos-1500 was a true cornerstone in the orbital oceanography. Its historical significance is established at all relevant levels.
At the national level, the development and operation of Kalmykov’s orbital RA-SLR had initiated, 40 years ago, new research area and discipline in the Ukrainian microwave and radar community - remote sensing of the Earth from aerospace platforms. Earth sensing became the main application area of the organized in 1992 National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU). In 1994-2011, Kalmykov’s department at IRE NASU was upgraded to the National Center of Radio-Physical Sensing of Earth (named after A. Kalmykov in 1996), administered jointly by NASU and NSAU. The design and development of the X-band orbital RA-SLR of Cosmos-1500 had led to successful overcoming of a wide range of scientific and technical problems. This enabled the technology transfer to the industry and subsequent manufacturing of a small series of these systems [7-9]. Since 1985, small-series production of Kalmykov’s radar systems was organized at the R&D Institute of Radio Measurements in Kharkiv (now, RADMIR State Co.); these systems were on board of six USSR/Russian “Okean” spacecraft. Besides, two Ukrainian satellites “Sich,” launched in 1997 and 2004, were equipped with Kalmykov’s RA-SLR manufactured at RADMIR. Based on this experience, later RADMIR Co. designed the optical-range remote sensing payload for the Egyptian spacecraft, operational in 2007-2010, Ukrainian satellite “Sich-2,” and some other projects.
At the regional level, the radar images acquired from the Cosmos-1500 SLR proved crucial in the rescue of at least 22 (sometimes, 40 and even 57 are mentioned) USSR freighters, trapped in the ice fields in the Arctic (October 1983, the De Long Strait) and a research motor vessel in the Antarctic (July 1985, the Ross Sea) [4,9]. Essentially the same SLRs worked on six USSR/Russian radar remote sensing spacecraft "Okean" in 1986-2004 (one more launch of such spacecraft was abortive). The main task of these spacecraft was the monitoring of the sea-ice conditions and provision of safe navigation in the Arctic. Additionally, they helped the USSR to detect and monitor many critical situations and natural phenomena on global scale, study the ocean surface winds, and the waving height and spectrum. The remote sensing data were found indispensable for the monitoring of the natural catastrophic phenomena such as powerful tropical cyclones, hurricanes, convective structures, oil spills, river floods, etc. and hence reducing their impact.
At the global level, the experience gained from the development and operation of Kalmykov’s SLR onboard Cosmos-1500 convincingly demonstrated, for the first time, that such a radar could be efficiently used to observe and monitor, practically in real time, the mesoscale processes in the world ocean, the sea ice cover, edge and thickness, the surface wind and the ocean waving characteristics, the snow melting, precipitations and floods. Before that, all these tasks were viewed as solvable only with the aid of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology, more expensive and less developed at that time. For the polar sea navigation, important discovery was that a real-aperture SLR could provide trusted microwave images of sea ice fields and polynyas, with a lower but sufficient resolution, in an order wider swath than a SAR system [3,4-6]. This was especially important in the polar night conditions, when the airborne observation was impossible. Thanks to the fully onboard real-time data processing, the images were formed in orbit, unlike the preceding Seasat and Shuttle mission images.
This role has been never contested by anyone although Russian publications after 2000 tend to ignore the Ukrainian origin of that system that is motivated by clear political reasons, namely, by the course of the KGB-rooted leadership to the destruction of Ukraine as independent state [9].
Kalmykov started from designing the radar-like spaceborne systems, so-called scatterometers, in the mid-1970s [3,4] and soon formulated the concept of the orbital radar. His academic leadership is seen in the facts that he personally suggested the polar ice as the main object of the microwave imaging. Besides, he proposed the slotted waveguide as the radar antenna. He also insisted on the inclusion of the real-time onboard processing of microwave images and a dedicated RF communication equipment to stream the images directly to the users. Besides, his non-technical contributions spanned across a wide spectrum of activities. These included the supervision of close collaboration with two other Ukrainian laboratories, Institute of Marine Hydrophysics NASU and Pivdenne Design Bureau, and the repulse of the fierce attack of his Moscow colleagues, who tried to snatch the design of the orbital radar to their laboratories [7-9]. When he realized that his radar was a truly magic instrument that could rescue the freighters, hopelessly blocked by the ice in Polar Ocean, he personally broke through the KGB guards to a secretive meeting of the inter-services emergency committee, using the printed out images of sea ice fields as a key argument [7-9].
Within the 20-year period, Kalmykov grew his team from a small research group to a department of IRE NASU, established in 1979, and then, after the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, to the National Center of Radio-Physical Sensing of Earth in 1994. This center had joint affiliation with NASU and the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU). After his death in 1996, the Center received the name of A. Kalmykov and became a pride of Ukraine. However, in 2011 it returned to the status of IRE NASU department. This was reflecting general decline of Ukraine’s space activities after the failure of the last RA-SLR remote sensing spacecraft, Sich 1M, in 2004. Its launch was performed from the Russian launch site, using a Russian booster, in line with the inter-governmental agreement. However, the spacecraft was placed into a wrong orbit that made it useless. This failure was silently interpreted as the act of covert sabotage and forced Ukraine to look for the alternative launch sites and services. Without an orbital radar, the A. Kalmykov Center lost the funding of NSAU.
What is also important to mention, Kalmykov was always interested in international dimension of his work. The space research was shrouded in secrecy in the USSR, however, even before its collapse in the early 1992 Kalmykov started establishing collaboration with NASA and ESA. He traveled to the USA and Europe, where he personally met with leading US scientists in the Earth remote sensing, was very active in various committees and conferences, and encouraged his younger staff members to look for postdoc opportunities at the NASA laboratories. Already in 1993, these efforts resulted in a comprehensive review on the 3-year work of the Cosmos 1500 RA-SLR published in high-reputed international journal, co-authored by two leading experts from NASA [4].
What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?
Quoting [3], in the area of microwave technology, the Soviet program was hindered by inadequate techniques. The quality of the Soviet SAR imagery available in the West indicated that they had difficulty obtaining adequate power from their oscillators and amplifiers, especially when coherence was required. This probably accounted for the lag in their development of coherent SAR techniques compared to incoherent RAR techniques. Besides, their spaceborne SARs did not employ the pulse compression techniques. This in itself necessarily limited the power they could transmit in an individual pulse. Finally, their systems seemed to be relatively unreliable compared to U.S. systems, indicating a lack of quality control in their production techniques. Ironically, this weakness when coupled to the availability of their satellite launch opportunities in some sense produced a strength. This was because they were willing to launch instruments into space without the strict quality controls imposed by U.S. requirements. This resulted in cheaper launches, easier check out of new techniques, and faster spaceborne application of these techniques.
Technical obstacles: choice of platform, orbit, microwave source, antenna, and signal processing When designing and creating the orbital RA-SLR, Kalmykov was under tremendous pressure from the Ministry of Space Industry, which demanded a working system as soon as possible. Perhaps, only one parameter was given a priori – this was the “polar” orbit with very high inclination, over 85 degrees, to enable the coverage of the Arctic region. The other parameters of the system were up to developers. Still, Kalmykov was well prepared and had immediately suggested solutions to each of arising questions. He expressed the idea of using the existing platform of the ELINT reconnaissance spacecraft “Tselina”, manufactured at PDB in Dnipro. This matched his plan to develop a radar of the X-band, incoherent, working at around 3-cm wavelength, as necessary for the sea waving measurements, of a moderate pulse power, with the real aperture provided by a 10-m long slotted waveguide antenna. This choice more-or-less guaranteed the resolution of 1-2 km in a several-hundred km swath from a 650-km orbit, to monitor the sea-surface wind field, seasonal dynamics of sea ice covers and study the ocean-atmosphere interactions [5,7-9]. Each radar has three main components – the source, the antenna, and the receiver with signal processing circuits. As the USSR semiconductor sources at that time were hopelessly unreliable and simply too low-power, the type of source was clear from the beginning – a magnetron. Still, Kalmykov could not take a standard source developed in Moscow as it was less powerful than he wanted. Therefore, he gathered a group in his department, responsible for the 100-kW magnetron. The choice of antenna was also rather obvious – as it had to be folded at the ground and automatically unfolded in orbit, this could be only a slotted waveguide. Fortunately, a prototype already existed and worked at a dedicated turboprop plane. Such antenna was also convenient as it provided the vertical polarization of the emitted and received signals (VV), necessary to obtain the maximum contrast of radar images when observing the sea waiving and to ensure the maximum observation swath. However, in the X-band that antenna had to be at least 12 m long, and hence had to be split into at least 5 folded sections. Unfolding them and assembling into a single well-matched structure was a new and difficult engineering problem. It was solved by Kalmykov’s team together with PDB collaborators and tested in Dnipro. Thanks to the special string mechanism, unfolded antenna distortions remained lower than 2 mm. This enabled the radiation pattern width of 0.2° in the azimuthal plant (it was 42° in the elevation plane). As the ambitious task, from the beginning, was to provide a pioneering feature - real time on-board image synthesis, this necessitated inclusion of the corresponding signal-processing unit. Such a unit was developed at IMH NASU in Sebastopol and integrated into the radar at IRE NASU. Receiver of SLR provided the sensitivity of -140 dB. Political obstacles: lack of support at IRE, jealousy of central labs, and disbelief of authorities. In 1973-1979, Kalmykov’s research at IRE NASU was under great pressure – it was not approved by the then director, who was afraid of huge responsibility linked to the work on space programs. Even the aid of PDB had little effect [6-9]. In summer of 1979, Kalmykov gave up and took a decision of moving to IMH NASU in Sebastopol. Fortunately, his friends had informed of this situation the mighty Ministry of Space Industry, which proposed the IRE director to establish a remote sensing department headed by Kalmykov. When the development of RA-SLR for Cosmos 1500 was approaching the system release in early 1983, the radar laboratories of the central R&D establishments in Moscow and Leningrad launched a fierce campaign of discrediting Kalmykov’s choice in favor of real-aperture radar. They demanded to cut short his work and, instead, transfer the task and all contracts to them, promising to develop a Seasat-like SAR system. Only thanks to quick and successful development and to the trust and support of the mission coordinator from PDB, Kalmykov was able to rebuke these attacks and keep working on his RA-SLR. At the time of the rescue mission in autumn 1983, the developers had to overcome the disbelief of the administration of the Northern Maritime Route, which did not perceive either the radar images or the arguments about the need to withdraw the freighter caravan (to save it) into a vast polynya found near Wrangel Island - north (!) of the disaster site. The last argument of Kalmykov that tipped the scales in favor of this proposal was his threat to complain to the Central Committee of CPSU.
What features set this work apart from similar achievements?
By the early 1980s, the only other country which developed and operated orbital radars, were the U.S.A. As admitted in [3], then the US researchers paid no or little attention to active microwave imagery and, instead, emphasized altimetry and scatterometry. US RARs were never designed and flown in space, while the SAR systems worked at Seasat in 1978 (3 months) and at the Shuttle short 3-5 day missions in 1981 and 1984. In contrast, the USSR started from the radiometry in the mid-1970s and switched to developing both RAR and SAR active systems in the early 1980s.
Here, Cosmos 1500, launched in 1983, started the series of oceanographic spacecraft with almost identical RA-SLR sensors. They operated at the lower than Seasat SAR wavelengths around 3 cm, dictated by the need to sense the driving wind, and provided the resolution of 1-2 km. While the SAR resolution is by 1-2 orders better, the USSR SAR development was painful and too slow, in part due to the lack of powerful coherent microwave sources. In contrast, Kalmykov’s RA-SLR was much simpler instrument, could use the existing incoherent magnetrons as sources, had already a tested air-borne prototype, and provided the imaging of wide ocean areas with acceptable for the polar navigation and hurricane tracking resolution. On the other novel on-board equipment, integrated with RA-SLR, worth mentioning is a dedicated signal-processing and image-formation unit that generated the stream of information in ready-to-use format understandable for a freighter captain. Besides, these images were transmitted in real time to the ground and maritime users via a dedicated RF channel, to be printed with a teletype printer. It should be recalled that the SAR images of the contemporary US spacecraft SARs were post-generated with few week delay. In principle, the X-band radar images planned to be combined with the scanning millimeter-wave radiometer images and with the optical images from a multispectral sensor. However, the radiometer of Cosmos-1500 never started working, while the optical sensor was useless in the polar night conditions when RA-SLR rendered its most remarkable service. The idea of combining three bands, however, was fully implemented on the subsequent spacecraft equipped with Kalmykov’s RA-SLR in 1986-2004.
Why was the achievement was successful and impactful?
Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.
[1] “NSSDCA ID: 1983-099A-01, Mission Name: Cosmos 1500,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, accessed on 10.08.2023
Description. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1983-099A Cosmos 1500 Facts in Brief: Launch Date: 1983-09-28, Launch Vehicle: Tsiklon-3, Launch Site: Plesetsk, U.S.S.R. The Cosmos 1500 spacecraft was a precursor to the operational Russian Okean ("Ocean") series of oceanographic remote sensing missions. The Cosmos 1500 tested new sensors and methods of data collection and processing. Cosmos 1500 had the capability of overlapping and processing images from its sensors. Data from Cosmos 1500 were sent directly to ships or automated data receiving stations and was applied in navigation in northern oceans. The instrument complement was highlighted by an all-weather Side-Looking Real Aperture radar (SLRAR) operating at 9.5 GHz. Experiments. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1983-099A-01 The Side-Looking Real Aperture Radar (SLRAR) on Cosmos-1500 was the first spaceborne SLRAR. The instrument was constructed and developed at the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics (IRE) of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to provide 2-dimensional images of ice and oceanographic scenes. The SLRAR operated at a frequency of 9.5 GHz in vertical (V) polarization providing 0.8 x 2.5 km resolution and a swath width of 425 km. SLRAR data were processed on-board and transmitted directly to ships and automated data receiving stations. The data were used to make high resolution radar maps of ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic. The data were also used to derive wind speed and direction at the ocean surface. All-weather radar imagery was provided to the user community in real-time by means of a 137.4 MHz Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) channel. Imagery from the SLRAR on-board Cosmos-1500 was used to rescue about 50 Soviet ships trapped in heavy ice in the Arctic during the polar winter of 1983. In 1986, real-time data was used to rescue the inhabitants of a research station in Antarctica. The SLRAR instrument was a precursor to other radars used on the oceanographic series of satellites (Okean-1. -2, and -3). Similar instruments were used on the Cosmos-1602 and Cosmos-1766 spacecraft.
[2] “Okean Program,” Satellite Missions Catalogue, eoPortal, powered by European Space Agency, accessed on 10.08.2023
Quick Facts. https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/okean#okean-program Okean (Ocean) is a USSR/Ukrainian (prior to/after 1992) Earth observation satellite program for the operational monitoring of ocean surfaces (sea surface temperatures, wind speed, sea color, status of ice coverage, cloud coverage and precipitation). In particular, the Okean-O1 spacecraft with their polar orbits provide valuable complementary data on the ice status in the Arctic and Antarctic regions (support of navigation information for ships in the northern latitudes), which are not visible from geostationary meteorological satellites. Cosmos 1500 (also referred to as Okean-OE the first prototype spacecraft); launch from Plesetsk on a Tsyklon vehicle on Sept. 28, 1983; orbit: 649 x 679 km, inclination = 82.6º; S/C mass = 1950 kg. The spacecraft was operational until July 16, 1986. Sensor Complement. https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/okean-o1#sensor-complement RLSBO (Side Looking Real Aperture Radar) Kharkov IRE, Ukraine, PI: Kalmykov) is the prime sensor of the Okean series (11.1 m antenna length). Wavelength/frequency: 32 mm/9.7 GHz (X-band); resolution = 2.1 - 2.8 km in flight direction, = 1.2 - 0.7 km in cross track direction; swath width = 450 km.
[3] U. S. Strategies for Cooperation with the Soviets on Ocean Science, Report of a Workshop held 29-31 October 1991, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543 https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/34909/noaa_34909_DS1.pdf
(page 48) Kosmos 1500/ Okean Series With the launch of Okean 3 in June, 1991, the Soviets continued their strong tradition of flying real aperture radars (RARs) in space. This satellite was the sixth in the series which began with Kosmos 1500 in 1983. The RARs which are flown in these spacecraft generally operate at wavelengths of about 2 cm and yield resolutions of 1-2 km. While not as high resolution as synthetic aperture radars (SARs), these RARs are much simpler instruments and may allow the imaging of large-scale ocean features in nearly the same manner as a SAR.
(page 50) While U.S. and Soviet programs are similar in the visible and infrared ranges, they tend to be almost complementary in the microwave region. The U.S. has emphasized altimetry, scatterometry, and radiometry far more than active microwave imagery. No RARs have been flown in space by the U.S. while SAR imagery has been relatively scarce in the past and very few SAR systems are planned for the future. The Soviet program, on the other hand, while pioneering radiometry techniques has tended to strongly supplement them with active microwave imaging techniques. They have flown RARs in space for many years and are presently supplementing these with SARs. Their plans for the future appear to call for continued flights of RARs and an increasing number of flights of SARs. The Soviets, so far as the group could determine, have never flown a scatterometer in space and have flown only one, apparently unsuccessful, prototype altimeter in a satellite.
(page 51) In the area of microwave technology, the Soviet program is also hindered by inadequate techniques. The quality of the Soviet SAR imagery available in the West indicates that they have difficulty obtaining adequate power from their oscillators and amplifiers, especially when coherence is required. This probably accounts for the lag in their development of coherent SAR techniques compared to incoherent RAR techniques. Even today their space borne SARs do not employ pulse compression techniques. This in itself necessarily limits the power they can transmit in an individual pulse. Finally, their systems seem to be relatively unreliable compared to U.S. systems, indicating a lack of quality control in their production techniques. Ironically, this weakness when coupled to the availability of their satellite launch opportunities in some sense produces a strength. This is because they are willing to launch instruments into space without the strict quality controls imposed by U.S. requirements. This results in cheaper launches, easier check out of new techniques, and faster spaceborne application of these techniques. Perhaps because of their reliance on analytical rather than numerical techniques and their hardware limitations, Soviet researchers tend to make theoretical and experimental assumptions which would not be acceptable in the U.S. One example of this is the consistency with which they make and utilize non-directional wave spectral measurements in situations where U.S. investigators would feel the need of the complete directional wave spectrum. Another example is their tendency to treat the transfer functions necessary to infer surface wave properties from microwave backscatter as constants. U.S. researchers have spent much time and money trying to determine the dependence of these functions on microwave and environmental conditions. A final example is their willingness to ignore the effects of flow distortion when making measurements of air-sea interactions. Thus they make a multitude of measurements from ships which U.S. researchers would question and are planning to deploy a new research tower with very large legs in the Black Sea for studying air-sea interactions. (page 55) Key Soviet individuals and institutions … Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Kharkov, Dr. Anatoly Kalmykov - Head of Remote Sensing Dept.
[4] A.I. Kalmykov, S.A. Velichko, Y.A Kuleshov., J.A Weinman, I. Jurkevich, “Observations of the marine environment from spaceborne side-looking real aperture radars”, Remote Sens. Environ, 45, pp. 193-208, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-4257(93)90042-V
(page 193) Real aperture, side looking X-band radars have been operated from the Soviet Cosmos-1500, -1602, -1766 and Ocean satellites since 1984. These radar systems observe a 475 km wide swath with 1-2 km horizontal spatial resolution. Wind velocities were inferred from sea surface radar scattering for speeds ranging from approximately 2 m/s to those of hurricane proportions. The wind speeds were within 10-20% of the measured in situ values, and the direction of the wind velocity inferred from the radar measurements agreed with in situ direction measurements within 20-50 °. Various atmospheric mesoscale eddies and tropical cyclones were thus located, and their strengths were inferred from sea surface reflectivity measurements. Rain cells were observed over both land and sea with these spaceborne radars. Algorithms to retrieve rainfall rates from spaceborne radar measurements were also developed. Spaceborne radars have been used to monitor various marine hazards. For example, information derived from those radars was used to plan rescue operations of distressed ships trapped in sea ice. Icebergs have also been monitored. Because oil films reduce the sea surface roughness and thereby alter the radar reflectivity, oil spills were also mapped. Tsunamis produced by underwater earthquakes were also observed from space by the radars on the Cosmos-1500 series of satellites. The Cosmos-1500 satellite series have provided all weather radar imagery of the earth's surface to a user community in real time by means of a 137. 4 MHz Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) channel. This feature enabled the radar information to be used in direct support of Soviet polar maritime activities. (page 205) … polynyas with dimensions of a few kilometers, which can be readily observed by Cosmos-1500 SLRARs, may exist for several days. Because of this, knowledge of their location and lifetime is a practical aid to navigation. Thus, during the polar night of 1983, the radar data from Cosmos-1500 was the only information available to plan the rescue of a fleet of nearly 50 ships trapped in sea ice, That catastrophe occurred because sea ice developed unusually early that year in the vicinity of the Long Strait along the Arctic coast of the Soviet Union. Two powerful ice breakers had been unsuccessful in clearing a path to the convoy. However, a large polynya north of the convoy near Wrangel Island was discovered in the Cosmos-1500 SLRAR imagery, and the rescue was implemented through it. The rescue of this convoy was described in the New York Times [“Most Soviet ships freed, but ice saga is not over,” N.Y. Times 133 (27 Oct. 1983): 2 (col. 1) and “Russians free the last ship in flotilla trapped in Arctic,” N.Y. Times 133 (Oct. 28, 1983):3 (col. 1)]. The use of SLRAR data to support navigation in sea ice was also used to rescue the research ship Mikhail Somov in Antarctic waters during the Antarctic winter of 1985 [S. Schmemann, Schmemann, “Soviet plans to rescue a research ship from Antarctic ice,” New York Times 134(9 Jun., 1985):10 (col. 1).)] This ship drifted for 4 months in sea ice whose thickness was approximately 5 m. The condition of the crew and the scientific staff became critical after 3 months. The icebreaker Vladivostok proceeded from New Zealand to Antarctica to rescue the distressed vessel. The ice breaker was capable of handling ice no thicker than 1-1.5 m. Consequently, it could only travel through suitable leads in the sea ice. Because of an unexpected encounter with a severe storm, the Vladivostok lost 180 barrels of fuel for helicopters which were to have evacuated the Somov's crew. The planned operation was on the verge of failure. At this point, the commander decided to attempt to reach the trapped ship via a polynya that was discovered in the SLRAR radar images. SLRAR imagery also yielded information on the drift speed of the whole sea ice complex. It turned out that larger polynyas were quite stable and had a sufficiently long life to permit the rescue. During the AprilJuly time frame, information on such polynyas was systematically assembled by the Department of Hydrometeorology of the IRE. On 24 July 1985 the Vladivostok entered the channel discovered by the spaceborne SLRAR. In slightly over 7 h, the ice breaker covered nearly 100 km, cruising almost as fast as it does in the open seas. This was the turning point in the operation. The entire operation of rescuing not only the crew, but of the research vessel as well, took slightly less than 5 days.
[5] A. I Kalmykov, “Real aperture radar (RAR) imaging from space”, Radio Science Bulletin, no. 276, pp. 13–22, 1996. https://www.ursi.org/content/RSB/RSB_276_1996_03.pdf
PDF copy is attached.
[6] W.S Wilson, J.-L. Fellous, H. Kawamura, L. Mitnik, “A history of oceanography from space”, Remote Sens. Environ. Vol. 6. Manual of Remote Sensing. Amer. Soc. for Photogrammetry and Remote Sens., pp. 1–31, 2005. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leonid-Mitnik/publication/263696750_A_History_of_Oceanography_from_Space/links/5e3c22ef92851c7f7f20b8ca/A-History-of-Oceanography-from-Space.pdf
(page 10) Kosmos-1500, the first satellite to carry a real aperture radar (RAR), was launched in 1983. This RAR operated at a wavelength of 3.15 cm (X-band) with vertical polarization; the swath width was about 460 km, and the spatial resolution was 2.1–2.8 km (in flight direction) by 0.8–3.0 km (normal to flight). A 37-GHz horizontally polarized side-scanning microwave radiometer and four-channel visible imaging system were also carried on Kosmos-1500. This set of sensors was also flown on Kosmos-1602 (launched in 1984) and Kosmos-1776 (in 1986), as well as the Okean series satellites (Kalmykov 1996).
[7] G.K. Korotaev, V.V. Pustovoitenko, Y.V. Terekhin, V.I. Dranovsky, S.S. Kavelin, Y.D. Saltykov, O.L. Yemelyanov, V.N. Tsymbal, V.B. Efimov, A.S. Kurekin, V.A. Komyak, A.P. Pichugin, “Thirty years of domestic space oceanology. 1. Space system Ocean–Sich,” Space Science and Technology, vol. 13, no 5, pp. 028-043, 2007 (in Russian). https://doi.org/10.15407/knit2007.05.028
(page 32, translation) The idea of RA-SLR development and use at the Soviet oceanographic spacecraft was authored by A.I. Kalmykov, who had the background of 35 years of IRE NASU research the into basic features of the microwave scattering from the waiving sea surface. This research had led to creation of electromagnetic model of the surface that forms the radar response (two-scale model) and development of the physical foundations of the radar sounding of the sea, land, and continental and sea ice. The adequate physical understanding of the radar response formation from various surfaces had enabled A.I. Kalmykov and his team, in collaboration with the experts from the other organizations, to develop and create the radio-physical system and its kernel – the orbital RA-SLR.
[8] V.V. Pustovoitenko, Y.V. Terekhin, S.V. Stanichny, et al., “Satellite radar monitoring of marine areas. To the 30th anniversary of the launch of the oceanographic spacecraft Cosmos-1500," in Ecological Safety of Coastal and Shelf Zones and Complex Development of Shelf Resources, IMH NASU Press, no 27, pp. 65-70, 2013 (in Russian). http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/56916
(page 67, translation) The equipping of the oceanographic spacecraft with RA-SLR was first suggested by A. I. Kalmykov at one of the meetings [at PDB in 1980] during the discussion of the directions of development of the USSR space radio oceanography. His quick estimations showed that technically this idea could be realized on the platform of the Tselina spacecraft [ELINT spacecraft already developed at PDB] … and less than in 3 years, on 28.09.1983, the experimental spacecraft Cosmos-1500 was placed into orbit, equipped with such an all-weather instrument for radar monitoring.
[9] G.B. Veselovska-Maiboroda, S.A. Velichko, A.I. Nosich, “The orbital X-band real-aperture side-looking radar of Cosmos-1500: a Ukrainian IEEE Milestone candidate,” IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Mag., vol. 11, no 3, pp. 8-20, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/MGRS.2023.3294708
PDF copy is attached.
Other relevant references: [10] A.S. Gavrilenko, A.S. Kurekin, V.N. Tsymbal, V. I. Soroka, A.P. Evdokimov, V.V. Kryzhanovsky, V. I. Dranovsky, V.V. Andrienko, “A spaceborne coherent SLR for remote sensing in a strip mode”, Int. Conf. Radar Systems (Radar 97), Edinburgh, 1997, pp. 276 – 279. https://doi.org/10.1049/cp:19971678 [11] A.I. Kalmykov, A.S. Kurekin, V.N. Tsymbal, “Radiophysical research of the Earth’s natural environment from aerospace platforms,” Telecommunications and Radio Engineering, vol. 52, no 3, pp. 41-52, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1615/TelecomRadEng.v52.i3.100 [12] V. K. Ivanov and S. Y. Yatsevich, "Development of the Earth remote sensing methods at IRE NAS of Ukraine," Telecommunications and Radio Engineering, vol. 68, no. 16, pp. 1439-1459, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1615/TelecomRadEng.v68.i16.40 [13] F. J. Yanovsky, A. I. Nosich, O. O. Drobakhin, O. V. Shramkova, N. T. Cherpak, Y. A. Averyanova, K. Arkhypova, and D. M. Vavriv, “Microwave activities in Ukraine”, Proc. European Microwave Conference in Central Europe, Prague, 2019, pp. 229-234. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8874754
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