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Airborne Hyperspectral Imaging
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| Internal view of the Short Wave InfraRed hyperspectral imaging system's sensor head unit. (Photo courtesy of ITRES Research Limited.) |
The Airborne Research Program of IAR's Flight Research Laboratory has identified airborne hyperspectral imaging as an important strategic research direction in its airborne remote sensing program. In this area, the FRL is involved in a collaborative project with Defence Research and Development Canada - Valcartier (DRDC-V) to implement an airborne version of DRDC's ground-based system. Another project currently underway in partnership with industry, academia and other government agencies combines airborne hyperspectral imaging and airborne gradient magnetics to deduce the spatial and spectral mapping of iron-oxide units to produce a 3-D estimate of geologic unit volumes. (See story in the Summer 2002 issue of the IAR Flyer.)
A significant new direction for FRL in the airborne hyperspectral research field, was the decision to acquire a Short Wave InfraRed (SWIR) hyperspectral imaging system from ITRES Ltd. of Calgary. This will complement the existing program in remote sensing and in airborne atmospheric research. The new instrument has 160 spectral channels covering the 1000 nm to 2450 nm range of wavelengths and has a continuous data collection ability of up to 5 hours per flight. The SWIR instrument will be installed on IAR's Convair 580 aircraft and be available sometime in June/July 2003. With this new SWIR system, the potential areas of immediate research impact will be in resource exploration, although FRL also intends to seek diverse applications in global change science and in aircraft icing.
