The emergence of imaging spectrometry in Europe

Abstract

In 1984 the European remote sensing research community became aware of Imaging Spectrometry. AIS, the Airborne Imaging Spectrometer of JPL had been tested from 1982 onwards and AVIRIS became operational in 1989. The paper describes how MONITEC with their FLI/PMI enabled first IS flight campaigns (EISAC-I) in Europe, which were followed by experiments with AVIRIS, CASI and later the GER-7915 called DAIS. Numerous flight campaigns were conducted by DLR, VITO, NERC, INTA and others. Commercial companies offered and are still offering flight opportunities with airborne instruments. Specim and NEO are successfully suppling commercial systems to the market. The satellite projects HIRIS, GEROS, HRIS, PRISM, SPECTRA and others resulted finally in MODIS and MERIS as well as CHRIS-PROBA and Hyperion. Future projects include among others ENMAP, PRISMA, FLEX and HyspIRI