EnMAP Mission Status Overview

Kurzfassung

The Environmental Mapping Program, shortly EnMAP, is a German satellite, launched on April 1st 2022. The satellite carries an hyperspectral instrument that samples about 200 frequency bands between 420 nm to 1000 nm (VNIR) and from 900 nm to 2450 nm (SWIR). EnMAP is now more than 2 years in orbit and is acquiring data at an increasing pace. Users feedback, as collected during these years at conferences and workshops dedicated to hyperspectral imagery, is extremely positive: the EnMAP HSI instrument generates data of quality beyond expectations. Thanks to the experience gained during the time of operations, the team of the Ground Segment, supported by the Space Segment and in collaboration with the Science Segment, gradually enhanced the Missions proficiency. They implemented new features and fine-tuned the observing strategy, thus optimizing the exploitation of the satellite capabilities. Moreover, they further developed the processing pipeline, thus improving the quality of the derived products. In 2024 the EnMAP team joined forces with the PRISMA team to acquire data in parallel with both satellites and started collaborating also with other flying hyperspectral missions to generate more and more match-ups. We will give an overview of the health state of the satellite and of the onboard resources (e.g. fuel). We will present the highlight of the two and a half year of routine operations, which in 2024 ran almost uninterrupted and almost doubled the amount of data stored in the EnMAP archive. We will present some numbers about the users (e.g. nationalities, research area) and acquired data (e.g. geographical coverage) and address the platforms from which the data may be retrieved. We will present the activities to support the development of commercial use cases for the EnMAP data. We will conclude with an outlook about the plans and goals of the mission for the next years.