CHIME – Hyperspectral Imaging Mission

Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment, or simply CHIME, will help maintain and ensure a more sustainable future for our planet.

Mission Objective

CHIME is one among six missions of the Copernicus Expansion missions and will consist of two satellites – CHIME-A and CHIME-B. Both will provide hyperspectral images to map the changes in land cover and help provide sustainable farming techniques.

Mission Significance

This instrument goal is to deliver regular hyperspectral data, which will provide various information that all contribute to improving technological processes, eventually making a huge impact on humanity.

Source: eoPortal – Thales Alenia Space

Engineering Challenges

CHIME’s design faces numerous engineering challenges, when the first is achieving exceptionally high spectral resolution across a wide wavelength range. But also, ensuring radiometric and spectral stability, maintaining optical alignment and thermal balance while controlling stray light in a compact instrument is a great challange. Finally, guaranteeing long-term calibration stability in harsh space conditions.

Methodology Overview

CHIME will transport a distinctive spectrometer covering the visible to shortwave infrared range. Additionally, CHIME will act simultaneously with Copernicus Sentinel-2, enhancing capabilities in applications like land-cover mapping.

Each satellite will be loaded with a hyperspectral imager (HSI). Each imager uses pushbroom-type grating technique to capture the data precisely and clearly. The HSI abilities and characteristics:

• Swath width: 130km
• Ground Resolution: 30m
• Bandwidth: ≤10 nm
• Spectral Range: 400 nm – 2500 nm

The observation will take into consideration all land and inland water bodies according to the following parameters:

•  Latitude range: 56°S – 84°N
• Area: ≥100km²
• Coastal zones: within 50km from land
• Open water depth: ≤50m

Source: ESA

Acktar’s Solution

Acktar participated by providing the Fractal Black coating to the Hyperspectral Spectrometer. Acktar’s coatings deliver almost blackbody absorption across CHIME’s wide hyperspectral range. This coating reduces stray light and spectral contamination and also helps maintain thermal equilibrium.

Impact

The contribution of CHIME to scientific research and technological applications is wide. From forestry management, eco-system sustainability and water quality to food security and agriculture and so much more – the transmitted data is used in countless fields that promoting science and humanity in general.

The Copernicus Program

The EU Copernicus program was established in 2014. It is the earth observation component of the EU Space program. The program aims to achieve maximum efficiency in global earth observation capacity. This means developing technologies that will allow data to be as high-quality and wide-ranging as possible and creating systems that are as continuous and autonomous as possible. All of that is to provide access to the most accurate information, improve environmental management, and gain a greater understanding of minimizing the effects of climate change.

After six missions, all called Sentinel, the second generation of the Copernicus program was produced, known as Copernicus 2.0 or the Copernicus Expansion Missions. As mentioned before, CHIME is a part of the expansion program; therefore, it’s called Sentinel-10.

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