To prepare VITO for the deployment of the APEX airborne imaging spectrometer in the broad sense, i.e. campaign planning, flight planning, data acquisition, ground truthing, data correction and data dissimination, a number of airborne campaigns have been realized in the period 2002-2005. In 2003 the campaign was executed under the authority of the PRODEX Programme.
A second incentive for campaigns such as CASI-TIR 2003 is to prepare the Belgian Science Community for the advent of APEX and subsequent spaceborne hyperspectral Land Missions, to support the application development for this novel earth Observation technology and to contribute to the understanding of land processes and interactions at a local or regional (or national) scale.
Belgian interests in the hyperspectral technology:
The APEX airborne spectrometer will be operated by VITO in Mol (Belgium) under the authority of ESA. This state of the art imaging spectrometer will become available for the Belgian Science Community.
APEX has been designed to serve the needs of a broad palette of Scientific Users in the fields of simulation, calibration and validation of variables; atmospheric chemistry and physics; vegetation and ecology; geology, soils and minerals; coastal and inland waters; snow and ice; urban areas; algorithm development. The contiguous sampling throughout the solar reflected wavelength range between 380 and 2500 nm, allowing for classical analytical as well as advanced Spectroscopy techniques, makes the hyperspectral technology a valuable tool for Earth Observation of Aqueous and Terrestrial ecosystems.
