The 2024 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) meeting on Geoscience and Remote Sensing was held last week. Not to dwell too much (mostly terrestrial), my take:
Sun, 7 Jul: Tutorial, HD-9: Mapping minerals with space-based imaging spectroscopy
What is asteroid surface study except mineralogy with space spectroscopy? If you’re lucky enough to get a probe, a nice flyby will get you resolved (>100 pixels on target) geomorphology, maybe gravimetry if the trajectory is a good one. If you’re really lucky, and get an orbiter, then you get spectroscopy in X- and gamma-rays, possibly neutron temperature. Except… that’s still spectroscopy, just spectra in another range. And you would still have a vis/nir spectroscope on the craft anyway.
Tutorial, HD-11: Optical remote sensing image restoration
All space missions have some limitation: finite launch mass, fairing volume, instrument aperture, and power consumption… possibly all three, possibly others. There’s also the question of downlink bandwidth, though the rise of solid-state memory has allowed buffering and some leeway on that constraint. Net result: no spray-and-pray photography, no fat filesizes from >25-megapixel bougie cameras in glorious color (14-bit x three Bayer filters). So how do we squeeze every last drop of information out of our limited, constrained cameras?
– CCS.41: Financing the Future: Fostering Innovation in Space Technologies through Diverse Funding Mechanisms
It’s a new world… or not-world? We’re living in the NewSpace era, there’s more to program funds than governments and tax revenue. Primarily, Earth Observation (EO) has commercial applications and therefore paying customers, which aids the remote sensing aspects of science programs. There’s also situational awareness (space junk, plus foreign spacecraft), which has both commercial and government customers. And yes, there is at least one commercial venture launching instruments. Ultimately, asteroid mining is its own justification: resources from asteroids close their own logic and (at least some ways) close their own business cases.
– CCS.43: Geology and Geophysics across the Solar System
Do I need to explain this? The session explicitly states it will cover asteroids.
– CCS.76: Multistatic Radar Tomography for Estimating Internal Properties of the Earth, Atmosphere, and Celestial Bodies
Rosetta performed a radar tomography experiment. Hera will perform a radar tomography experiment. Asteroid miners will perform radar tomography WORK. Do I need to continue?
– CCS.106: Space Lidar: Missions, Technologies, and Observations
All successful asteroid missions had a Lidar. Hera will fly a Lidar. Lucy launched with no Lidar, but it’s a strictly flyby spacecraft, we’ll let that one pass. And Psyche launched with no Lidar, but there’s plenty unusual about Psyche (the mission, and the body). In any case, Psyche (the mission) has a lasercom demo anyway… and MMX will fly a Lidar. Let there be Lidar.
– CCS.109: Super-resolution and pansharpening
See -11, Image Restoration, above.
– CCS.133: Leveraging CubeSat and SmallSat validations for future of remote sensing
Yes, we truly are living in a new era; NewSpace funding mechanisms are possible partly due to smaller payloads on smaller launchers. Much smaller payloads.
I get the sense that the future will be- if not predictable- quite productive, maybe profitable (just a question of when). Let there be launches.