Five Years Orbit Experience of a Small Satellite Hyperspectral Imaging Mission

This paper will summarise the results of a hyperspectral imaging mission that has now completed more than five years in orbit and is providing a wealth of data to Users across the world. The mission has demonstrated, fairly conclusively, that such sophisticated payloads can be implemented successfully on a small satellite platform. The instrument being flown is the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) developed within the Optical Payload Group (OPG) of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. The instrument is flying on PROBA, a small agile satellite, which was launched in October 2001. The platform provides pointing in both across-track and along-track directions, for target acquisition and multi-angle observations, particularly for measurement of the Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) properties of selected targets. The instrument covers a spectral range from 400nm to 1050nm, at £11nm resolution with a spatial sampling interval at perigee of 17m and programmable band sets. The swath width imaged is 13km at perigee. Observations requests for the science mission are selected, prioritised and scheduled into feasible observations on a daily basis. The Mission continues to operate successfully even in its sixth year and demonstrates the success of the mission and the utility of the platform and instrument