Talk:Lacrosse (satellite)

Similarities to Magellan
I believe that any statement that any Lacrosse constellation member is similar to Magellan are a complete fabrication.


 * Nonsense!47.215.180.7 (talk) 18:04, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Magellan is a probe whose SAR was designed to operate a long distance from a receiving station, where downlink windows are precious and, especially at the time, slow, and power is at a premium due to the number of instruments onboard. As such remote SARs are often designed to use burst-oriented chirp phases (this technique is associated with an imaging mode called ScanSAR in modern missions). While this decreases the size of data returned for ground processing, this comes at the expense of decreased resolution and increased doppler ambiguity for some parts of the image.

There are actually more reasons. (I think, but cannot confirm, that phase information was not preserved as a part of Magellan's measured results).

As such, a "continuous" chirp SAR makes far more sense for an intelligence application such as that the NRO would be using a platform akin to Lacrosse as described around the web. Downlink from orbit [??] is relatively fast (and has been for a long time), so compact data is not as necessary, as such at the expense of the amount of data to be downlinked the performance of the radar can be improved drastically.

As well, according to Cumming and Wong, Magellan was based on the Voyager bus and used a parabolic antenna (while images taken by amateurs of the satellite clearly indicate a planar antenna).

In summary, I believe that the likening of Magellan to an observation satellite in orbit to be false. SAR imaging man 17:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The above is a bunch of crazy nonsense. (You seen to be having trouble with the word "similar".) "Magellan" and "Lacrosse" both use synthetic aperture radar, and thus they are prima facie similar to one another. (This means that it is as plain as the nose on your face.) The fine details of the technology make no difference at all. (Electronics engineers like me know this.) Furthermore, the Cassini space probe to Saturn was similar to these two in that it used synthetic aperture radar to observe the surface of the moon Titan, always shrouded in clouds. The word "similar" does not mean "identical".47.215.180.7 (talk) 17:51, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 11:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Any use of the acronym "SAR" needs to be done with great care because SAR also means "search-and-rescue". If you say something about the Lacrosse satellite being used in a SAR mode, then it is quite apparent that such a satellite could also be used for search-and-rescue missions. Be careful because such things in aerospace electronics OFTEN have multiple uses, even those that they were not designed for. This was made clear when the radar system of the Cassini probe was used for several unanticipated purposes.47.215.180.7 (talk) 18:01, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

missing source
"It is able to see through cloud cover and also has some ability to penetrate soil, __though there have been more powerful instruments deployed in space for this specific purpose__"

any sources on that?


 * Almost any X-band SAR can penetrate clouds, soil, or buildings (see Capella Space for instance). Real question is it X-band SAR. Nazargulov (talk) 19:55, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

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Messed up
The structure of the article seem to be messed up near "In pop culture" and "traversing Canis Minor".

--Mortense (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2020 (UTC)