SESAME (SEntinel-1 SAR companion Multistatic Explorer) is a passive SAR satellite mission proposed for the ESA Earth Explorer Program. SESAME comprises two receive-only C-band SAR satellites flying in close formation to build a single-pass SAR interferometer (SP-InSAR) using the active signal of the European Sentinel-1 satellite. The SESAME mission addresses applications in geoscience and climate research that require repeat measurements of high precision elevation data over land surfaces including ice covered areas and forests, exploiting the SP-InSAR and multistatic observation geometry of the satellite formation. The objectives, the measurement approach and geo-biophysical products of the mission are described.

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This paper provides an overview of the BIOMASS Mission End-to-End simulator (BEES) and of the mission performance analysis performed with it. The end-to-end performance, in terms of biomass estimates error, is close to the 20% error goal set for the mission. The main sources of errors are temporal decorrelation and the limited available bandwidth, while system induced errors have a negligible impact on the final performance.@en

This paper discusses the implementation of an end-to-end simulator for the BIOMASS mission. An overview of the system architecture is provided along with a functional description of the modules that comprise the simulator.@en