871International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B4. Amsterdam 2000. TEST RESULTS OBTAINED WITH THE LH SYSTEMS ADS40 AIRBORNE DIGITAL SENSOR

LH Systems, in co-operation with the German Aerospace Centre, has developed an airborne three-line digital imaging sen-sor, the ADS40. This sensor will provide imagery complementary to satellite images and aerial photos. The engineering model (EM) of the ADS40 has been successfully flown since late 1998. This paper describes the airborne experiments with the EM and its results. These experiments are restricted to the overall systems functionality only. The paper focuses on the principal test procedure and a few products derived from ADS image data. The emphasis is placed on general problems of developing new sensor systems and proves the necessity of detailed tests of all hardware subsys-tems and software parts at a very early stage of camera development. Additionally, the improved model with approximately 20,000 pixels per line is introduced. This prototype model (PM) was first flown in January 2000. Staggered arrays allow an improvement of the geometrical resolution, but require special retrieval algorithms.