The 30 year Evolution of the Alaska Satellite Facility

The Alaska SAR Facility took its first downlink in 1991 after coming to life by an innovative science proposal to NASA. At the time, the estimated synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data needs by the U.S. science community was about 10 minutes a day. The single antenna system was installed with five personnel to ensure these data were processed for the science community. The appetite of the science community for SAR data grew rapidly once the information rich data started flowing. The Alaska Satellite Facility was renamed in 2003 as an acknowledgement of the growth of the facility and its mission. Today, ASF's approximately 80 staff and students work on various grants and contracts, but remain focused on SAR. The breadth of utility of this complex data set is still growing. Just growing linearly would not meet the needs of the U.S. science community, so ASF has been agile, nimble, and focused on getting remote sensing data accessible in all senses of the word. In this talk, we will discuss how ASF has managed the growth as the demand grows. We will look at some of the large paradigm shifts in data processing and management that ASF embraced along the way.