Spaceborne and Ground Thermal Infrared Observations Provide a Firm Basis for the Space Station FireMapper

摘要

A series of successful spaceborne and ground based experiments have provided a firm basis for the design of the Space Station based FireMapper instrument. The prototype of the FireMapper Instrument was called ISIR (Infrared Spectral Imaging Radiometer) and was fabricated by Space Instruments, Inc. for NASA under an SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contract. ISIR was flown successfully on shuttle mission STS-85 in August, 1997 and collected over 60 hours of thermal infrared data in 4 spectral bands over a variety of land, ocean, and cloud scenes. This was the first spaceborne test of a thermal imager using an uncooled microbolometer detector array. This proof of concept space experiment demonstrated that the FireMapper will have sufficient sensitivity to observe both fires and tropical deforestation from the Space Station. Samples of the multispectral imagery obtained on mission STS-85 will be shown.