High-Speed Atmospheric Correction Algorithm for Spectral Image Processing

Generating land and ocean data products from NASA multispectral and hyperspectral imagery missions requires atmospheric correction, the removal of atmospheric transmission and scattering effects that contaminate the measurements. This program led by Spectral Sciences, Inc. (SSI) addresses the challenges of high-speed, high-accuracy atmospheric correction for NASA's current (e.g., Hyperion, ALI) and future (e.g., HyspIRI, LDCM) VSWIR spectral imaging instruments through speed, portability and science upgrades to SSI's FLAASH code. Applications include Direct Broadcast of data products generated on board the planned HyspIRI mission, which will avoid the time-consuming bottleneck of hyperspectral image telemetry. By combining FLAASH with a new radiation transport look-up table, and adding geographic information to the metadata stream, a unique, near-real-time capability would be developed and demonstrated on the NASA Elastic Cloud or Infrastructure As A Service. We will also address the issue of in-scene aerosol optical depth variation in atmospheric correction of very large-area images from HyspIRI and other sensors. In Phase II the software would be implemented on a flight processor to prototype HyspIRI Direct Broadcast. The software will be TRL 3 at the contract start; the Phase I product will be TRL 4 for space operation, TRL 5 for ground operation.

The software would provide automated, high-speed atmospheric correction for very wide variety of multispectral and hyperspectral sensors throughout DOD, DOE and the private sector, leading to widespread use among commercial data providers and distributors throughout the rapidly growing, multi-billion-dollar remote sensing industry. This spectral imagery is used in such applications as geological surveying, environmental assessment, precision agriculture, coastal and land management, resource mapping, change detection, search and rescue, and surveillance and reconnaissance.

The software will serve both short-term and long-term needs of NASA for timely analysis of optical imagery from a wide variety of platforms, particularly satellites, which rapidly cover enormous geographic areas. These sensors include the current EO-1 instruments Hyperion and ALI and operational Landsat satellites, the planned HyspIRI mission and Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), and MODIS on Terra and Aqua. The SensorWeb implementation will aid scientists at all NASA facilities and in data distribution programs such as SERVIR and CATHALAC. Phase II implementation of the software on the SpaceCube or Maestro testbed will support Direct Broadcast of on-board data product generation in HyspIRI.

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