A lightweight and wide-swath UAV camera for high-resolution surveillance missions

Designed to execute mapping and surveillance missions for crisis monitoring on a solar powered High Altitude Long endurance UAV 18 km high up in the stratosphere, the MEDUSA high resolution camera is able to acquire frame images with a ground sampling distance of 30 cm and swath of 3 km. Since mass is a dominant driver for the UAV performance the MEDUSA payload was severely mass optimised to fit within the physical boundaries of 2.6 kg, 12 cm diameter and 1 m length. An inertial navigation system and data transmission equipment is included. Due to the innovative dual sensor on single chip concept the MEDUSA payload hosts two independent frame camera’s of each 10000x1200 pixels (one panchromatic and one colour sensitive). The MEDUSA stratospheric camera has completed its system level test campaign in autumn 2012 and is ready for its maiden flight. Using the main building blocks of this stratospheric camera a modified version is being developed which is adapted to more conventional UAV’s flying at lower altitude. The current design is targeting a ground resolution of 10 cm and swath of 1 km with each single image. First test flights have been conducted with an engineering model version of the camera generating representative image data. Also the functionality is being expanded by adding hyperspectral sensitivity to high spatial resolution image acquisition within the same compact camera system.