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GaoFen-3

 

 


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GF-3 SATELLITE

Three Satellites, 1 m Resolution, 12 modes, Full Polarization, SAR, C-band

GF-3 (short for Gaofen-3) is composed of three satellites. The satellite is equipped a multi-polarized C-band Synthetic Aperture (SAR) at meter-level resolution. Its Imaging modes include spot mode, strip-map mode, and scan mode. GF-3 was launched on August 10, 2016, it is the first Chinese high-resolution SAR satellite to acquire multi-polarized SAR image with resolution of 1-500 meters, and the imaging swath is 10-650 kilometers depending on the varied imaging modes. GF-3 02 and 03 were successively launched on November 23, 2021, and April 7, 2022, they are GF-3’s follow-on satellites and provided with the identical parameters. The three satellites work as a constellation, doubling the collection and enhancing the revisit capacity.

 
  Technical Specifications
   Number of satellites      3 identical satellites: GF-3 and GF-3 02
   Mission Life      8 years
   Weight      2800 kg
   Launch
   time
     GF-3: August 10, 2016; GF-3 02: November 23, 2021; GF-3 03: April 7, 2022
   Orbit       631 km altitude, Sun-synchronous reapeat orbit,
  equatorial passing time 6:00 am (descending pass),
  6:00 pm (ascending pass)
   Centre
   frequency
      5.4GHz (C-band)
   Polarization      Single, dual and full
   Revisit
   capacity
     Single look: ≤5 days; double look, 10 m resolution and 100 km swath: 1.5 days (single satellite)
   Observing
   range
     South latitude 5°~North latitude 53°, East longitude 70°~West longitude 150°
   Imaging
   modes
    Spotlight
(SL)
Ultra fne
strip (UFS)
Spotlight
(SL)
Fine strip
2 (FS 2)
Standard
strip (SS)
Full polarized
strip 1
Full polarized
strip 2
Narrow scan
(NSC)
Wide scan
(WSC)
Global
observation scan
   Resolution
   (at nadir)
    1 m 3 m 5 m 10 m 25 m 8 m 25 m 50 m 100 m 500 m
   Swath
   Width
   (at nadir)
    10*10 km² 30 km 50 km 100 km 130 km 30 km 40 km 300 km 500 km 650 km
  Incidence
  angle
    20°-50° 20°-50° 19°-50° 19°-50° 17°-50° 20°-41° 20°-38° 17°-50° 17°-50° 17°-53°