Highly Enhanced Risk Management Emergency Satellite

HERMES (Highly Enhanced Risk Management Emergency Satellite) is potential European satellite mission for global flood management, being implemented by Technical University Munich and European Space Agency. With its main instrument - a reliable and precise Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) antenna - and its orbit characteristics (covering the whole earth surface in 3 days, low altitude), HERMES will provide stand-alone-data for: flood disaster monitoring, flood forecasting and flood prevention.

Data obtained by HERMES can be used for commercial soil type maps (e.g. for optimized land use). As only highly effective and orbit proven hardware is used, HERMES is designed to be reliable, precise and of low cost. The project can be extended for use on other space bodies (planets) for rapid observation of the planetary surface.