Title: REMI-Reduced Envelope Multispectral Imager for Sustained Land Imaging
Presenting Author: Paula Wamsley
Organization: Ball Aerospace
Co-Author(s): Angelo S. Gilmore, Jim Baer, Bill Good, Paul Kaptchen, Tom Kampe, Geir Kvaran, Lyle Ruppert, Keith Spargo, and Bob Warden

Abstract:
The US government was quick to recognize the value of space-based Earth observations and launched its first civilian Earth Observation satellite, LandSat-1, in 1972. Earth observations are valuable because 1) they capture the current state of the Earth and 2) they are used to develop and initialize mathematical models that capture our scientific understanding of the Earth system. Through the Landsat program, the US has maintained multi-spectral, moderate spatial resolution Earth observations for 45 years. A prioritized list of Earth observations was published in the 2014 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations. Observations from the LandSat program ranked #3, just behind satellite-based GPS and ground-based Next Generation Weather Radars (NEXRAD). Continuing the LandSat mission is clearly a priority, but the mission implementation needs to be revisited. There is a need to balance competing stakeholder desires for data continuity, new science, and data archive and accessibility within the current context of emerging sensor, platform, launch vehicle, and computational technologies, emerging commercial space players, possible international agreements for data sharing, and of course realistic levels of funding. Updating the LandSat mission to meet stakeholder expectations in a sustainable way is challenging but the work is underway and the future program is called Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI). REMI (Reduced Envelope Multispectral Imager) is a new instrument concept developed by Ball Aerospace specifically for the SLI program. The goal of REMI is to meet the current LandSat mission requirements with a much smaller volume, lower cost payload. A lower single unit cost enables economies of scale on multiple builds by leveraging non-recurring engineering costs. A low enough cost can enable multiple copies on-orbit at the same time for improved temporal sampling, a new approach to space segment reliability, and more frequent technology on-ramps. REMI achieves miniaturization through use of a common aperture for all spectral bands. REMI features a narrow instantaneous optical field of view that is scanned in the cross-track direction with a precision pointing mechanism. The pointing mechanism compensates for platform and ground motion while producing contiguous ground coverage in all spectral bands. Planned performance testing of REMI includes data acquisition and analysis of real-world scenes from an aircraft flying at an altitude of ~4,000 m. REMI explores one path to meeting the nations’s future land imaging needs. The REMI project plan and current status are presented.