The sustainable land imaging (SLI) program will inform the acquisition of landsat-like measurements for at least the next two decades. To improve on current land imaging capabilities, SLI aims to…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded a $3,010,707.77 grant to Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to mature the Compact Hyperspectral Prism Spectrometer (CHPS) imaging spectrometer technology for infusion into the Landsat program. The objective is to develop a new generation of smaller, more capable, and less costly instruments to meet or exceed current land imaging capabilities and support the Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) program. This three-year program, starting at Technology Readiness Level 3 and progressing to TRL-6, leverages Ball Aerospace's prior investments and expertise from the Landsat-8/OLI and OLI-2 programs. The award does not have a set-aside designation.

The sustainable land imaging (SLI) program will inform the acquisition of landsat-like measurements for at least the next two decades. To improve on current land imaging capabilities, SLI aims to develop a new generation of smaller, more capable, and less costly instruments that can meet or exceed current imaging capabilities. This proposal offers a compact hyperspectral prism spectrometer (chps), a visible-to-shortwave (vswir) prism imaging spectrometer that offers a path to enhanced science while maintaining continuity with legacy landsat multispectral measurements. Chps innovative prism spectrometer design avoids the straylight shortcomings of other imaging spectrometer forms and accommodates full aperture, full optical path calibration to ensure the high radiometric accuracy required to meet the SLI measurement objectives. This proposal leverages ball s investments to support SLI. A ball-funded chps prototype spectrometer was designed, built, aligned and tested in the laboratory, specifically to find a better approach to SLI. In addition, ball has an in-depth appreciation of landsat requirements from its successful development of landsat-8/OLI and the on-going OLI-2 programs. The objective of this program is to mature the chps imaging spectrometer technology for infusion into the landsat program. This is achieved through technology development, airborne demonstration, data product distribution and development in conjunction with science collaborators, and maturation of the instrument technology for spaceborne demonstration. We propose a three year program that begins at TRL-3 and exits at technology readiness of TRL-6. The 2013 NRC report landsat and beyond: sustaining and enhancing the nations land imaging program recommended that the nation should maintain a sustained, space-based, land-imaging program, while ensuring the continuity of 42-years of multispectral information. We are confident that our proposal provides a path to this achieve this goal while enabling new science measurements and reducing the cost, size, and volume of the vswir instrument.