Hyperspectral imaging—An advanced instrument concept for the EnMAP mission (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Programme)

In the upcoming generation of satellite sensors, hyperspectral instruments will play a significant role. This payload type is considered world-wide within different future planning.Our team has now successfully finalized the Phase B study for the advanced hyperspectral mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Programme), Germans next optical satellite being scheduled for launch in 2012. GFZ in Potsdam has the scientific lead on EnMAP, Kayser-Threde in Munich is the industrial prime.The EnMAP instrument provides over 240 continuous spectral bands in the wavelength range between 420 and 2450 nm with a ground resolution of 30 m×30 m. Thus, the broad science and application community can draw from an extensive and highly resolved pool of information supporting the modeling and optimization process on their results. The performance of the hyperspectral instrument allows for a detailed monitoring, characterization and parameter extraction of rock/soil targets, vegetation, and inland and coastal waters on a global scale supporting a wide variety of applications in agriculture, forestry, water management and geology. The operation of an airborne system (ARES) as an element in the HGF hyperspectral network and the ongoing evolution concerning data handling and extraction procedures, will support the later inclusion process of EnMAP into the growing scientist and user communities.     

Mars/Moon Cratering Rate Ratio Estimates

This article presents a method to adapt the lunar production function, i.e. the frequency of impacts with a given size of a formed crater as discussed by Neukum et al. (2001), to Mars. This requires to study the nature of crater-forming projectiles, the impact rate difference, and the scaling laws for the impact crater formation. These old-standing questions are reviewed, and examples for the re-calculation of the production function from the moon to Mars are given.     

The Least-Square Approximation of Inertial Platform Drift

The drift angle of an inertial platform which is gyro-stabilized with respect to inertial space is equal to the integral of the gyro drift rate. Under controlled laboratory environment the drift angle, denoted by y, may be measured and plotted against time in an interval [0, T]. Without loss in generality, one may take y(0)= 0. A straight line yf can be found, such that the quantity E2 is minimized, where begin{equation*}E^2 = {frac{1}{T}int^{T}_{0}(y-y_f)^{2}}dt.end{equation*} The equation for yf is of the form yf = at + b and, in general, both a and b are nonzero. It is desirable to determine a statistical relationship between the gyro drift rate and the expected value of the minimum E2 for any given interval T. An analysis in this paper determines this relationship and derives a general expression for , where the symbol <*> denotes statistical expectation. It is found that increases linearly with the variance of the gyro drift rate. This general formula is then developed in detail for the case of a first-order Markovian gyro drift. is evaluated numerically and its square root plotted vs. the interval T and the gyro correlation time. The same problem is also solved for the case when yf is constrained to intersect the origin, i.e., when b=0.     

Paired overbounding for nonideal LAAS and WAAS error distributions

A significant challenge in fielding space-based and ground-based augmentation systems (SBAS and GBAS) for GPS involves the validation of navigation integrity, which requires the establishment of error bounds for aircraft position. This paper introduces a new approach to validating position-domain integrity by using two-sided envelopes for each ranging source. This paired-bounding approach allows for error distributions of arbitrary form and thus improves on earlier integrity validation approaches restricted to zero-mean, symmetric, and unimodal distributions     

The flares of April, 1980

A brief report is given on the characteristics of solar flares from the active region Boulder 2372. It is interesting to note the morphological similarity (homology) between many of these events, most likely caused by the overall constancy of the magnetic field configuration. Under closer examination this first-order homology breaks down, a fact that may help us understand the basis of the flare mechanism.