Remote Sensing Satellites and Airborne Sensors

Abstract

To develop an automated satellite image understanding system, the properties of satellite images should be known in advance. Therefore, this chapter introduces var-ious remote sensing satellites and airborne systems. In almost all cases, the sensors on these satellites and airborne systems are called by the same name as the satellite or the airborne program. We follow the same convention. The remote sensing satellites (sensors) we consider are Landsat, SPOT, IRS, AVHRR, Ikonos, Quickbird, FORMOSAT, CARTOSAT, Worldview, Alos, and Geoeye; the aerial sensors (programs) we consider are Daedalus, AVIRIS, HYDICE, and DAIS 7915. Wherever possible, we give a brief historical development of the sensor family with the operation dates, resolution, and revisit interval. We also give the spectral properties of the latest sensor for each family. We tabulate this informa-tion as a sensor selection guide. At the last section, we summarize and compare the properties of these sensors and their usage through time to give a brief information to the potential user. 2.1 Landsat One of the best known families of remote sensing satellites is Landsat. This is a US based sensor family that has evolved over time. The first satellite in this fam-ily, launched in 1972, was Landsat 1. It had two sensors, the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) and the Multi Spectral Scanner (MSS). RBV was a television camera, re-placed by the Thematic Mapper (TM) in Landsat 4 and 5. In the last two satellites, there are panchromatic (pan), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensors (Table 2.1). This family remains active; its average resolution is around 15 meters with a 16 day revisit interval. Table 2.2 summarizes the spectral properties of the latest family member, Landsat 7.