Resource Assessment for Hydropower Installations in the Ocean on the Basis of Spaceborne Radar Interferometry Roland Romeiser 1 , Hartmut Runge 2 , and Johannes Schulz-Stellenfleth 2 1 ) Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +49 40 42838 5430 E-Mail: romeiser@ifm.uni-hamburg.de 2 ) Remote Sensing Technology Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR) 82234 Wessling, Germany Phone: +49 8153 28 1364 / 2740 E-Mail: hartmut.runge@dlr.de / johannes.schulz-stellenfleth@dlr.de The siting and resource assessment for hydropower installations in the ocean, which exploit tidal currents for the generation of electric power, as well as the analysis of environmental effects of such installations, requires detailed information on the spa- tial and temporal variations of tidal currents. Until now, such information has been obtained mainly from in-situ measurements and numerical simulations. We would like to promote the use of a satellite-based remote sensing technique, which will become available for operational use in the near future. A combined use of circulation models, in-situ data, and satellite data will permit dynamical analyses with unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage and resolution. Slide 3: The first satellite to offer current measuring capabilities will be the German TerraSAR-X, which is scheduled for launch in late 2006. TerraSAR-X can take con- ventional high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of land and ocean surfaces for a variety of applications in several different modes of operation. In an experimental mode, the radar antenna panel with a total length of 4.8 m can be split into two independent parts for receiving. This antenna arrangement will permit a di- rect imaging of surface current fields by a technique called along-track interferometric SAR (along-track InSAR).