BIRD – a dedicated MISSION for detection and assessment of hot spot events

Abstract

The currently launched German BIRD (Bi-spectral Infrared Detection) mission was designed to give answers to different technological and scientific questions related to detection and assessment of hot spot events like vegetation fires, volcanic activities, burning oil wells and coal seams using push-broom sensors on board of a micro satellite. The BIRD mission primary objectives are: - test of a new generation of infrared array sensors adapted to Earth remote sensing objectives, - detection and scientific investigation of High Temperature Events such as forest fires, volcanic activities, and coal seam fires, - test and demonstration of new small satellite technologies, such as on-board navigation system, new board computers, star sensors, reaction wheels and other. Secondary mission objectives are: - test and demonstration of on-board classification by means of a neural networks circuit, - scientific issues related to the diagnostics of vegetation conditions and changes. The DLR funded BIRD satellite was launched with the Indian PSLV-C3 October 22, 2001 into a 568 km circular Sun-synchronous Low Earth Orbit. Starting from the scientific requirements and the mission constraints the paper presents the performance and limits of the payload dedicated to the detection and investigation of hot spot events from space. First results of the remote sensing of vegetation fires are presented. The multi-sensor system consists of the following main parts: - an infrared array sensor system basing on cooled CdHgTe-detectors with 2x512 pixels in a medium infrared channel (3.4-4.2µm) and in a thermal infrared channel (8.5-9.3µm), - a CCD camera with a red and a near infrared channel, - a payload data handling system with a 1 Gbit mass memory, - an on-board neural network classificator.