Millimetre wave image from the Geostationary Atmospheric Sounder demonstrator, developed by RUAG Space AB with Omnisys Instruments of Sweden. The image shows the relative brightness temperature of a nearby office building in mm-waves, acquired during outdoor testing in May 2010.
A 21-element demonstrator representing the central part of the 53 GHz interferometer has been developed to demonstrate its rotation-based imaging concept. The demonstrator supports full polarimetric measurements with a maximum baseline of ~75 cm, equivalent to 300 km resolution if positioned in geostationary orbit. The first images from outdoor measurements show that the imaging concept and algorithms performs as intended and it also demonstrates that the hardware technology is capable of receiving and detecting the very weak noise signals with sufficient sensitivity and stability to enable the system to be implemented.