The airborne imaging spectrometer APEX (Airborne Prism Experiment): Overview and status questions

摘要

Over the past few years, a Swiss/Belgian consortium is designing and building the next generation airborne imaging spectrometer APEX (Airborne Prism Experiment) under the authority of ESA's PRODEX programme. APEX is designed to be a dispersive pushbroom imaging spectrometer operating in the solar reflected wavelength range between 400 and 2500 nm. The spectral sampling interval is designed to be better than 10 nm in the SWIR and 5 nm in the VNIR range of the spectrum. The total FOV will be 28 deg, recording 1000 spatial elements across track at a maximum of 300 contiguous spectral bands simultaneously. The final radiance data products will be well characterized and calibrated traceable to absolute standards. The APEX consortium is subdivided into an industrial team responsible for the construction of the optical instrument, the calibration home base and the detectors, and a science and operations team, responsible for the acquisition, the processing and the archiving of the imaging spectrometer data, as well as for the distribution of the calibrated and corrected data to the Scientific User Community. APEX is at the end of its design phase and under partial breadboarding and will be fully operational in the year 2005.