Monitoring Results of the SAOCOM-1 Constellation: A mission overview and summary of results

SAOCOM is a scientific and commercial mission developed by CONAE, the National Space Commission of Argentina. It is composed of two identical satellites, each one carrying a fully polarimetric L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The main driver of the mission is the retrieval of soil moisture, an application that demands high radiometric and polarimetric accuracy. In this paper, we summarize the main external monitoring results and quality control obtained from the beginning of the constellation until now for both satellites. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">In addition, the devices and facilities that were involved in the external monitoring chain are described.