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| Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
At the end of "Data Capture II" the final discussion question read as follows:
"Choose a remote sensing technology. Explore and detail the application of that technology to a specific industry. Be as detailed as possible in your explanations."
I wrote the following response after letting the question work itself over in my brain for a bit and while my answer is much broader than originally asked for, I believe it is a good overview of a place within Industry where remote sensing is used, that we often forget about within the GIS space.
Space Exploration
One of the aspects of GIS that attracted me to learn more about it was how versatile it was, and the multitude of industries that it could be applied. I often tell people that any industry that has a spatial component can use GIS systems, whether they are building new structures or monitoring forests or agricultural fields. Throughout this class, we have examined how aerial photography and satellites can be used in industry. Earth observation is clearly one major use of the technologies.
The applications of remote sensing and GIS reach far beyond how I normally think of it and the industry and technology that I have chosen to investigate are space exploration and remote imaging. The ideas around GIS are easily applied to the exploration of other planetary bodies. Esri itself has an article on plotting the Mars landing sites, complete with a projection to allow them to plot correctly (Esri, n.d.). ArcGIS Pro itself now has a “Solar System” projection group, which includes a Mars GCS, as well as systems for its two moons.
The number of satellites orbiting planets other than earth is much smaller than what we can see around the earth, but they remain a key idea in the mapping and understanding of these planets.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched by NASA to observe Mars has several instruments such as the HiRISE imaging instrument (Wikipedia, n.d.-b). A hi-resolution camera that records a spatial resolution of 0.3m and three spectral bands, 400-600nm (blue-green), 550-850nm (red), and 800-1000nm (near infrared). The camera records the red images at 20,624 across, with the Blue-green and NIR at 4048 pixels across, read as the orbiter moves across the surface, with a potentially unlimited length, making this a push broom style camera (Wikipedia, n.d.-b).
Other planetary bodies close to our own that have had methods of remote sensing we have looked at during this course are Venus and the Magellan mission. Venus, unlike Mars, is covered by a thick atmosphere of clouds making optical imaging of the surface impossible. Magellan utilized SAR technology to image the ground beneath the clouds to gather information about the geology and topography of the planet (Magellan (Spacecraft), n.d.).
Even closer to home remote sensing is an important technology in lunar exploration. Remote sensing from the apollo missions as well as more recent visits has been utilized for analysis and site selection for future missions to the moon. Currently, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is in orbit and using technologies we discuss in this course to give us unprecedented views of the moon. The orbiter is utilizing an instrument called Mini-RF (Wikipedia, n.d.-a), this SAR allows the orbiter to gather spatial resolution of 30m and has two microwave bands, one at 12.6cm and another at 4.2cm (Wikipedia, n.d.-c). In addition to this SAR, the orbiter has the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), which is composed of dual push broom cameras as well as one wide-angle imaging camera (Wikipedia, n.d.-a). The dual LROC is capable of 0.5m of spatial resolution and records a spectral range of 400-750nm, as well as a 12-bit radiometric resolution(Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, n.d.). The single-camera portion of the LROC captures from 320nm to 689nm filtered into 7 spectral bands and has an 11bit radiometric resolution (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, n.d.). It has a spatial resolution ranging from 75m to 385m (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, n.d.)
While it is clear from this course that earth observation is an important and growing field with a multitude of applications, the technology and methods that were discussed have applications beyond the scope of our pale blue dot. The single technology we discussed is not currently in play when it comes to space exploration and the imaging of planetary bodies is LiDAR. With moon landings planned soon the use of LiDAR could become useful in this environment as well.
Works Cited
Esri. (n.d.). 3-Mapping the Mars Rovers’ Landing Sites. Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0404/mapmars3of3.html
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://www.lroc.asu.edu/
Magellan (spacecraft). (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft)
Wikipedia. (n.d.-a). Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter
Wikipedia. (n.d.-b). Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Https://En.Wikipedia.Org/Wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter. Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter#HiRISE_(camera)
Wikipedia. (n.d.-c). Mini-RF. Retrieved August 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-RF
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