Seasat[3] was the first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth's oceans and had on board one of the first spaceborne synthetic-aperture radar (SAR).

Seasat was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was launched on 27 June 1978 into a nearly circular 800 km (500 mi) orbit with an inclination of 108°.

[2] Seasat operated until 10 October 1978 (UTC),[1] when a massive short circuit in the Agena-D bus electrical system ended the mission.

These include imaging radars flown on NASA's Space Shuttle, altimeters on Earth-orbiting satellites such as TOPEX/Poseidon, and scatterometers on ADEOS I, QuikSCAT, and Jason-1.

[9][10] Subsequent ocean-observing SAR satellites with higher resolutions and sensitivities have not exhibited this claimed capability.