Radar, airborne or satellite-borne, that uses special signal processing to produce high-resolution images of the surface of the Earth (or another object) while traversing a considerable flight path. The technique is somewhat like using an antenna as wide as the flight path traversed, that being the large “synthetic aperture,” which would form a very narrow beam. Synthetic aperture radar is extremely valuable in both military and civil remote-sensing applications, providing surface mapping regardless of darkness or weather conditions that hamper other methods.