ALOS

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) follows the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite-1 (JERS-1) and Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) and will utilize advanced land-observing technology. ALOS will be used for cartography, regional observation, disaster monitoring, and resource surveying.

The ALOS has three remote-sensing instruments: the Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) for digital elevation mapping, the Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2) for precise land coverage observation, and the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) for day-and-night and all-weather land observation. ALOS have been successfully launched on an H-IIA launch vehicle from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan.

The Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) is an active microwave sensor using L-band frequency to achieve cloud-free and day-and-night land observation.

The Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) is a panchromatic radiometer with 2.5m spatial resolution at nadir. PRISM has three independent optical systems for viewing nadir, forward and backward producing a stereoscopic image along the satellite's track. The nadir-viewing telescope covers a width of 70km; forward and backward telescopes cover 35km each.

The Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2) is a visible and near infrared radiometer for observing land and coastal zones. It provides better spatial land coverage maps and land-use classification maps for monitoring regional environments.

PALSAR Fine Beam Sichuan Province Earthquake, China, 2008/05/22 © METI and JAXA	PRISM Nagasaki, Japan 2007/04/29 © JAXA 2007	AVNIR-2 Sapporo, Japan 2008/08/05 © JAXA 2008