Arctic and maritime surveillance: Radarsat-2...

...is, after some delay, getting close to launch:

As its older brother inches toward a fiery death after a spectacular life of 11 years -- long for space flights -- Canada's new radar satellite is being boxed and prepared for a December launch in Russia.

Testing at Ottawa's David Florida Laboratory is finished. Radarsat-2 has been shaken to simulate the violence of launch, and baked and frozen to simulate the nasty weather in space. Through it all the $531-million satellite survived in great shape.

Now it sits, folded up to the size of a minivan, waiting for the giant Antonov aircraft that will fly it next month to Iceland, then to Moscow, to catch a train for Launch Pad No. 6 at Baikonur...

While Radarsat-1 had a resolution of nine metres, its younger brother can resolve to three metres.

The old satellite could find a bus; the new one, a small car, Brule says.

Radarsat-2 will be better at detecting changes in the type of Earth's surface.

It will know which sea ice is old and which is new; it will know which part of a forest the pine beetle has eaten. It will find oil spills at sea, and track them to the ships [emphasis added] that illegally pumped out their waste far from shore. And since it uses radar, not normal cameras, it can see at night or through cloud.

It will map, measure crop conditions, track ships approaching our Arctic coast [emphasis added--role for UAVs here too], sell images of Chinese cities to the government of China, which is trying to measure urban sprawl caused by squatters.

It will chart illegal fishing too [emphasis added], especially in remote oceans where poachers' vessels can evade sea patrols but not an eye in the sky [ditto for UAVs].

Radarsat-1 does a lot of this already.

"But customers are all asking: Can you do it faster and with better resolution," said John Hornsby of MDA, the space agency's private partner in the satellite's construction. MDA will also own and operate the satellite, but the space agency's contribution amounts to a "pre-purchase" of data from it.

As a result, images will be able to reach customers in as little as an hour or two, Brule said.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice said the satellite, which will orbit from pole to pole, will help Canada aggressively assert sovereignty in the Arctic, and will give the government and northern people information on the effects of climate change.

The launch date is likely to be either Dec. 8 or 15.

Lots of help for the Canadian Coast Guard, as well as the CF. The government news release is here.