Total Aircraft Services of Van Nuys, Calif., said it expects to receive an STC for its Geographic Synthetic Aperture Radar (GeoSAR) airborne radar system.

The company has completed a successful system integration and flight test program using a Gulfstream II. It performed operational checks and STC flight testing from its Van Nuys hangar.

GeoSAR is being developed by a consortium including Calgis, Inc., a Fresno, Calif.-based geographic mapping company, the California Department of Conservation, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with funding provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Total Aircraft Services is preparing the design data package, modifying the aircraft and conducting the STC program.

GeoSAR includes a dual-frequency airborne radar system capable of collecting 94 square miles of data per minute. The system will be able to acquire three-dimensional images of the earth's surface through a technique called interferometry. The system will be operable day and night under almost all weather conditions, according to Total Aircraft Service. The company maintains that GeoSAR will be the first instrument able to map above, through and below vegetation canopies, while provideing data on such incidents as landslides overgrown with vegetation.