Combining High Spatial Resolution and Revisit Capabilities in the Thermal Infrared: the MISTIGRI Mission Project

Remote sensing in the thermal infrared (TIR) domain is well suited to the monitoring of the land surface processes governed by the energy exchanges between the canopies and the atmosphere. The context of climate change and growing anthropogenic pressure throughout the world makes applications dealing with agriculture, water use, monitoring of biogeochimical cycles and vegetation crucial. Although it is required to access to the agricultural field scale and simultaneously to cope with possible rapid variations of surface temperature related to water status and meteorological conditions, no system currently provides the needed combination of high spatial resolution with high revisit capabilities in the TIR. Users have still to face the dilemna between high revisit / low resolution (with Meteosat, Goes, AVHRR, MODIS) and high resolution / low revisit (ASTER, Landsat ETM+).

We present the MISTIGRI project (MicroSatellite for Thermal InfraRed Ground Surface Imaging) initiated by the French Space Agency CNES in cooperation with Spain and designed to fill this gap by proposing a spatial resolution of around 50m and a revisit of 1 or 2 days.

The scientific priorities of the mission primarily devoted to the monitoring of the continental biosphere are first described, and other possible fields of application (urban areas, coastal zones among others…) are listed. We also discuss the concept of the MISTIGRI mission, similar to that of VENµS, and based on a microsatellite combined with a network of ground experimental sites and associated scientific teams.

The mission specifications are then presented. The results of a feasibility study of the MISTIGRI mission performed during a 0 phase and a A phase currently carried on are briefly described together with a preliminary instrumental concept based on the use of a micro-bolometer designed by Thales Alenia Space for CNES.