VIS-NIR and TIR sensors for Stratospheric Platform-II

Stratospheric Platform (SPF) project is an enterprize to develop an airship to float at the altitude of 20 km for the use of earth observations and telecommunications. SPF-II is one of the steps toward realizing SPF to examine the stabilized flight of an airship at the altitude of 4 km, and is planned to be aloft in 2004. The earth observatoin facility on SPF-II will consist of three sensors: a visible-near infrared (VIS-NIR) sensor for the wavelength region 500 -- 1000 nm, a thermal infrared (TIR) sensor, and a trafic-monitoring sensor. In this paper, we present an outline of VIS-NIR and TIR sensors. The VIS-NIR and TIR sensors are planned as wide field (110 degree) imagers with 2-dimensional FPAs. Polarizetion will be measured with the VIS-NIR sensor. FOV of the VIS-NIR sensor is to be 8 km square at the footprint, and horizontal resolution to be 8 m with a 1280 × 1024 pixel Si-CCD FPA. The TIR sensor adopts an uncooled 320 × 240 pixel bolometer array, and has a FOV of 8 km × 6 kmsquare at the footprint, with horizontal resolution of 25 m. It covers three wavelength bands of 8.5, 10.8, and 12.0 μm with the filter wheel device.