Ball Aerospace Selected by NASA for Three Studies to Develop Future Sustainable Land Imaging Technologies
Sept. 14, 2020
Ball Aerospace was
selected by NASA to move forward with three
studies to develop and demonstrate innovative
Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) technologies for
potential use on future missions of the Landsat
program, a series of Earth-observing satellite
missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S.
Geological Survey that is entering its fifth
decade of existence.
The studies leverage
previous SLI Technologies, including the
Ball-built Operational Land Imager 2, which will
fly on the Landsat 9 mission launching in 2021.
"We are honored and excited
that Ball was chosen by NASA for three studies
to explore next-generation technologies for the
Landsat Program," said Dr. Makenzie Lystrup,
vice president and general manager, Civil Space,
Ball Aerospace. "These studies reflect the
importance of continued advancement and the
development of creative solutions. We are
pushing the boundaries of what's possible when
it comes to innovating robust,
precisely-calibrated sensors in increasingly
compact packages."
The selection came on the
heels of the final airborne science flights of
two other Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI)
technology demonstrations – the Reduced Envelope
Multispectral Imager - Airborne (REMI-AB) and
the Compact Hyperspectral Prism Spectrometer -
Airborne (CHPS-AB). Both were designed to
demonstrate improved Landsat mission performance
in compact instrument packages.
The three studies include:
Landsat Calibration
Satellite (LCS) – This study builds on the CHPS
instrument and aims to provide the
cross-calibration and validation capability
required to knit together a future Land Imaging
Constellation. LCS-B focuses on the key
technical challenges to providing an on-orbit
reference instrument – specifically, differences
in spatial and spectral performance between
disparate platforms, such as Sentinel-2, Planet,
and Landsat-8.
TransCal – This is an
innovative calibration approach using Polymer
Dispersed Liquid Crystal material to continue
the precise on-orbit calibration method used
extensively in the Landsat program, while
significantly reducing the size and complexity
of the calibration subsystem. This study aims to
reduce resources needed (e.g., cost, size,
volume and mass) for next-generation SLI
instruments, while meeting or exceeding the
current Land Imaging capabilities.
Reduced Envelope
Multispectral Infrared Radiometer (REMIR) – This
study will design and build a single, full
spectral range (visible through thermal
infrared) instrument suite that represents the
next step in meeting the thermal infrared band
requirements for future Landsat missions. The
proposed technology leverages the previous
success of the REMI instrument, as well as NASA
and Ball investments in new detectors,
innovative calibration subsystems (e.g. the NASA
Compact Infrared Radiometer in Space CubeSat
mission, built by Ball and currently in orbit)
and a scanning approach that enables significant
reductions in size, weight
Ball Aerospace has more
than six decades of experience providing
leading-edge systems and instruments to help
predict the weather, map air quality and monitor
the Earth's environment. Ball has played a key
role in the continuity of the current Landsat
program having built the OLI instrument flying
on the Landsat 8 satellite and the OLI-2
instrument for Landsat 9. As a partner on the
NASA SLI-Technology program, Ball has developed
and demonstrated innovative instruments that
provide for a flexible and sustainable
next-generation Landsat architecture.