KOMPSAT-5 is part of the Korean National Development Plan of MEST (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology) which started in 2005.
The project is being developed and managed by KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute)
The primary mission objective is to develop, launch and operate an Earth observation SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite system to provide imagery for geographic information applications and to monitor environmental disasters.
KOMPSAT-5 is provided with:
- COSI (Corea SAR Instrument), a multi-mode X-band instrument able to obtain high resolution SAR imagery in various modes at an incidence angle of 45º
- AOPOD (Athmosphere Occultation and Precision Orbit Determination), which is a secondary payload consisting of IGOR, a spaceborne dual frequency GPS receiver and the LRRA (Laser Retro Reflector Array).