PhytoMapper – Compact Hyperspectral Wide Field of View Instrument

Abstract

Recent advancement on detectors, optics fabrication, metrology and interference filters are the basis of a new and compact hyperspectral instrument to map vegetation and soil in applications requiring fast revisit time and medium spatial resolution.

The instrument stems from the design of the Proba-V, a small satellite developed to ensure continuation of the Spot-Vegetation products. The instrument presented in this paper has been optimized to accommodate a detector with a slightly different size that provides the necessary format for a hyperspectral instrument.

With a mass of only 5 kg, a power consumption of 5 W, an overall size of 300 × 220 × 160 mm (W × L × H), and with a staggering 2,400 spectral channels covering the VNIR spectral range, the instrument provides unprecedented ratio between mass and resolution, opening the possibility to perform hyperspectral imaging to both small satellites for Earth Observation and small interplanetary probes.

The paper presents the design, performance of this instrument, and the development status of the critical technologies, namely optics manufacturing, development of the linear variable spectral filter, and of the detector.