A Small Low Equatorial Orbiting Satellite - Ssr for Monitoring the Amazon Region

Frequent cloud cover over the Amazon region is the greatest limitation to monitor, via optical remote sensing systems, ongoing activities that are threatening the greatest rainforest of the world. Current optical remote sensing satellites do not have sufficient temporal and spatial resolution in order to be used as operational monitoring system. For instance, with the Landsat system it has been possible to cover the entire Brazilian Amazon with 229 cloud free scenes, only once a year. It is of high relevance to have an efficient monitoring system, from space, to assist the management of natural resources and to protect the Amazon environment. The SSR system presents an innovative solution through a small remote sensing satellite placed in a low equatorial orbit, providing synoptic images of the entire Amazon region, several times a day. The SSR will be a 400 kg satellite using the Brazilian multimission platform for small satellites, which is being developed under INPE's coordination and manufactured by the Brazilian industry. The SSR imaging system consists of a VIS/NIR sensor and a MIR sensor. The VIS/NIR sensor is a pushbroom CCD camera with three optical heads and five spectral bands: blue, green, red, NIR and an additional water vapor content band for atmospheric correction purpose. The MIR sensor is a pushbroom camera with two optical heads and one band in the 3.4 4.2 μm region. The spatial resolution at nadir should be 40 m for the VIS/NIR bands and 500 m for the MIR band.