Instrument | Status/ Accuracy | Instrument Description | Measurement Technology | Timeline |
ALT | Operational | Global ocean topography, sea level and gravity field measurements. | Radar altimeter |  |
AMR | Operational | Altimeter data to correct for errors caused by water vapour and cloud-cover. Also measures total water vapour and brightness temperature. | n/a |  |
AMR-C | Operational | Capabilities of the AMR with the addition of an on-board calibrator for high stability wet-tropospheric path delay correction. | n/a |  |
AMR-S | Operational | Capabilities of the AMR with the addition of a 2nd beam to provide wet-tropospheric path delay correction within both swaths of the primary radar instrument (KaRIn) | n/a |  |
GPSP | Operational | Precision orbit determination. | n/a |  |
Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) | Operational | Swath mapping radar altimeter that provides measurements for surface water. | Radar altimeter |  |
LRA | Operational | Baseline tracking data for precision orbit determination and/or geodesy. Also for calibration of radar altimeter bias. Several types used on various missions. (ASI involved in LAGEOS 2 development). | n/a |  |
SAR (RADARSAT-2) | Operational | All-weather images of ocean, ice and land surfaces. Used for monitoring of coastal zones, polar ice, sea ice, sea state, geological features, vegetation and land surface processes. | n/a |  |
SAR (RCM) | Operational | All-weather, C-band data to support ecosystem monitoring, maritime surveillance and disaster management. | n/a |  |
SAR (RISAT) | Operational | Radar backscatter measurements of land, water and ocean surfaces for applications in soil moisture, crop applications (under cloud cover), terrain mapping, etc. | n/a |  |
SRAL | Operational | Marine and land services. | Radar altimeter |  |
IRIS | Being developed | Ku-band Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (with added Ka-band channel for snow depth retrieval and in combination with AMR-CR MW Radiometer for ice&snow classification and wet troposphere correction) to cover the needs for continuous monitoring of sea ice
thickness and land ice elevation measurement after Cryosat-2, with enhanced performance. | Radar altimeter |  |
AMR-CR | Approved | Capabilities of the AMR with the addition of an on-board calibrator for high stability wet-tropospheric path delay correction and a redesign with respect to AMR-C (i.e. the 3 high res MW radiometer channels at 90, 130 and 166 GHz are an integral subsystem of the instrument and not experimental as in AMR-C) | n/a |  |