BIRD a Dedicated Mission for Remote Sensing of Vegetation Fires

Abstract

For hot spot events as forest and vegetation fires, volcanic activity or burning oil wells and coal seams a dedicated space instrumentation does not exist. Sensors being used now for the observation of these events have some drawbacks because they are not designed for the hot spot investigation. For the near future there are missions planned with a new generation of cooled infrared array sensors. The German BIRD (Bi-spectral Infrared Detection) mission will answer a lot of technological and scientific questions related to the operation of a compact bi-spectral infrared push-broom sensor on board of a micro satellite and related to the detection and investigation of fires from space. Therefore, the BIRD primary mission 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. The secondary mission objectives consists in: · 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 payload is a multi-sensor system designed to fulfill the scientific requirements under the conditions of a micro satellite. The multi-sensor system consists of the following main parts: · a 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 (8.5-93.µm) · a CCD camera with a red and a near infrared channel · a payload data handling system with a 1 Gbit mass memory · a on-board neural network classificator. The BIRD mission is a small satellite mission funded by DLR. The BIRD satellite is launched with the Indian PSLV-C3 in October 2001 into a 575 km circular Sun-synchronous Low Earth Orbit. Starting from the scientific requirements and the mission constraints the presentation will show the performance and limits of the payload with regard to the detection and investigation of fires or volcano activities from space. First results of the remote sensing of vegetation fires should be presented.