Airborne Thematic Thermal InfraRed and Electro-Optical Imaging System

The innovation is an advanced Airborne Thematic Thermal InfraRed and Electro-Optical Imaging System (ATTIREOIS). ATTIREOIS sensor payload consists of two sets of advanced Focal Plane Arrays (FPAs) a broadband Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS) and a four (4) band Multispectral Electro-Optical Sensor (MEOS) to approximate Landsat ETM+ bands 1,2,3,4, and 6, and LDCM bands 2,3,4,5, and 10+11. The airborne TIRS is 3-axis stabilized system capable of providing 3D photogrammetric images with a 1,850 pixel swathwidth via pushbroom operation. MEOS has a total of 116 million simultaneous sensor counts capable of providing 3 cm spatial resolution multispectral orthophotos for continuous airborne mapping. ATTIREOIS is a complete standalone and easy-to-use portable imaging instrument for light aerial vehicle deployment. Its miniaturized backend data system operates all ATTIREOIS sensor components, an INS/GPS, and an e-Gimbal Control Electronic Unit (ECU) with a data throughput of 300 Megabytes/sec. It has a volume of 0.03 m3 and a mass of 20 kg. The backend provides advanced onboard processing, performing autonomous raw sensor imagery development, TIRS image track-recovery reconstruction, LWIR/VNIR multi-band co-registration, and photogrammetric image processing. With proposed geometric optics and boresight calibrations, the ATTIREOIS data products are directly georeferenced with an accuracy of approximately one meter.

ATTIREOIS supports light aerial vehicle deployment and collects timely and cost-effective multispectral photogrammetric data products. With its real time GIS-ready centimeter level resolution VNIR and decimeter level resolution LWIR multispectral images with 0.02 K temperature measurement resolution. It is capable of performing following commercial applications: High-resolution aerial thermal mapping over a wide variety of industrial, commercial, and residential areas to detect thermal anomalies, including insulation deterioration of a powerline and rooftop thermal leakage; Thermal and pollution effluents from mining and other industrial operations such as quarries, paper mills, and power plants; Rapid disaster and emergency response Surveillance and reconnaissance Forest fires and residual warm spots; Land resource management; Law enforcement; Aerial deer and seabird counts; Identify mosquito-breeding areas Monitor vegetation water consumption by mapping evapotranspiration at high resolution Precision agriculture, crop growing status monitoring, and vegetation specie mapping.

ATTIREOIS is a portable airborne instrument that provides optical and boresight calibrated, precisely and directly georeferenced, and error-estimated surface emissive and solar reflective LWIR/VNIR multispectral images. By approximating 5 fixed wavelength bands of Landsat ETM+ sensor at very high resolution, it has near term NASA commercial applications of: 1) Underflight satellites to support satellite measurement calibration and validation observations; 2) Location and mapping of water-harboring subsurface caves and new sources of spring waters in the southwestern United States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah); 3) Deployment in a UAV/Airship for either field-expedient or persistent launch range surveillance/intrusion data collection; 4) Mapping of river, river delta, and coastal water thermal gradients, color gradients, and pollution. Its long term NASA applications include: 1) Exploration of Martian water-harboring subsurface caves; 2) Mapping the extent of certain Moon/Mars surface resources and identifying promising outpost/science sites and traversable terrains.

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