The BIRD payload platform

Abstract

For hot spot events as forest fires, volcanic activity or burning oil spills and coal seams a dedicated space instrumentation doeas not exist. With its successful launch end of October 2001 with the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle the German Aerospace Center starts closing this gap with the micro-satellite mission BIRD. As space segment serves a three-axis stabilized satellite of 92 kg including an contingent of over 30% for the scientific instruments. The main payload consists of a bi-spectral pushbroom scanner operating in the middle and thermal infrared spectral range. It is combined with a VIS/ NIR pushbroom scanner and a panchromatic channel with higher geometrical resolution. Besides the main objective of hot spot detection the mission has to answer several technological questions of the operation of cooled detectors in space, special aspects of their adaptation to the satellite platform as well as their calibration. After 2000 orbits the scientific payload works well and showed remarkable results already.