TERSSE DEFINITION OF THE TOTAL EARTH RESOURCES SYSTEMnFOR THE SHUTTLE ERA VOLUME 2 AN ASSESSMENT OF THE CURRENT STATE-OF-THE-ART

摘要

The objective of Task 2 is to provide a realistic, confident assessment of the stale-of-the-art of ail technologies affecting the Earth Resources program. The 1972-75 period is essentially the unchangeable near-term future which will serve as the basis for technology developments in the 1978-02 time frame. Task 2 was not intended to answer the many questions concerning the configuration, development, costs and timing of the Earth Resources program. Its primary objective is to assess the current state-of-the-art and determine those technologies which are lagging. In addition, there was a serious effort to gain insight into the overall workings of the program itself, such that this insight could be used in later tasks of the study where answers to the man}- program questions would be derived.nThe methodology involved first an identification of the key elements in todays Earth Resources system and a break¬down of these elements into basic functional areas. The technological accomplishments In each of the functional areas was then determined and evaluated versus our understanding of evcntv.al program needs or ultimate capability. The assessment has demonstrated that the major state-of-the-art problems in the near future are inaccuracies of radiometric measurements caused by atmospheric effects, a gross imbalance between sensor technology and all other parts of the Earth Resources system, and the almost total lack of developing operational applications of remotely-sensed data.nFollowing the state-of-the-art summary is a discussion on several of the system-level observations that grew out of the assessment effort. These observations in general involve the intertelationship of several of the technology areas.