Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning has released KOMPSAT-5 images acquired for the calibration purpose. KOMPSAT-5 was launched on August 22, 2013 from the Yasny launch base of Russia and under early operation and calibration.

During the early operation and calibration phase, all the functionalities of satellite have been verified and now it is under calibration of payload system. The released images are acquired for the verification of payload performance

KOMPSAT-5 carries X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for earth observation, and is capable of day-and-night imaging under all weather condition.

It provides three operation modes: High Resolution Mode (spotlight mode) to provide 1 m resolution with 5 km by 5 km swath, Standard Mode (strip mode) to provide 3 m resolution with 30 km swath and Wide Swath Mode (ScanSAR mode) to provide 20 m resolution with 100 km swath at 550 km altitude.

The KOMPSAT-5 CAL/VAL team will complete the calibration of the radar instrument and optimizing the data processing chain by the end of February 2014.

After completion of calibration, KOMPSAT-5 will be operated to provide products for various applications such as security and defense, image interpretation, mapping, land and natural resource management, environmental monitoring, disaster monitoring and more. The commercial data of KOMPSAT-5 are expected from the second quarter of 2014.

According to Korean Space Development Plan, KARI will launch KOMPSAT-3A equipped with VHR optical and medium resolution IR sensor in 2014 and KOMPSAT-6 equipped with VHR SAR in 2019 in addition to existing VHR optical and SAR systems such as KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3 and KOMPSAT-5.

Such earth observation programs are planned and developed to meet the strong needs of earth observation data in public and commercial sectors. It is expected that provision of various sensor data and data continuities foster the applications and services based on the earth observation data.

KOMPSAT-5 is the first Korean radar satellite developed by KARI through the collaboration with Thales Alenia Space Italy, developer of COSMO-SkyMed payload.

The KARI is responsible for the operation and public use of the KOMPSAT-5 data, and Satrec Initiative is in charge of commercial marketing of KOMPSAT constellation, a unique combination of VHR optical data and SAR data, including KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3 and KOMPSAT-5.