Publications

Version: 1.1 Approved

LDO-ID 2016-03-03-02

Title Flex & Sentinel 3: A tandem to monitor vegetation

Abstract

The FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) mission is selected as the ESA’s 8th Earth Explorer opportunity mission. The ESA-funded phase A-B1 study has been devoted to demonstrating the system feasibility and a breadboard activity on the FLORIS payload is on-going. The FLEX flight segment consists of a single satellite carrying the FLORIS payload and flying in formation with Sentinel 3 mission in a Sun synchronous orbit at a height of about 815 km, making use of data synergy with other visible reflectance (from OLCI ) and surface temperature data (from SLSTR). The satellite is based on a recurrent platform. This ensures that the required levels of performances will be met and allows the satellite development to achieve the industrial cost target while minimizing development risks. The physical satellite configuration is driven by the accommodation of the payload to be mounted on top of the platform guaranteeing an unobstructed view of the Earth. FLORIS, a pushbroom hyperspectral imager, will observe the vegetation fluorescence and reflectance within a spectral range between 500 and 780 nm at medium spatial resolution (300 m). Multi-frames acquisitions on matrix detectors during the satellite movement will allow the production of 2D Earth scene images in two different spectral channels, called High Resolution (HR) and Low Resolution (LR) with spectral resolution of 0.3 and 2 nm respectively and spectral oversampling of a factor 3.

Authors Jauffraud Eric, Basseler Pierre, Coppo Peter Mario, Taiti Alessio, Battistelli Enrico, Rossi Maurizio

Type Paper for Seminar/Symposium/Conference

Media ESA - Living Planet Symposium 2016 (09-13 May 2016, Prague, Czech Republic)

Web site

Anno 2016