This project aims at the incorporation of Spanish research teams to the start-up design stages of the future European Space Agency (ESA) missions. The grant of this project would allow us to play an important role in the context of the preliminary hyperspectral and multi-angular future missions, which are either in the early preparation steps (SPECTRA) or in the experimentation stage (such as PROBA). In addition, it would also permit us to participate in the design and development of airborne systems to carry out technology testing of APEX and AIRFLEX.

This project aims to contribute to the development of theoretical models for hyperspectral data interpretation, and to the implementation of multiangular geometric registration methods and athmospheric corrections, compression techniques, automatic classification and other elements in the Ground Segment of the SPECTRA mission. In addition, some aspects of design and enhancement of the acquisition tools will be developed. On one hand, the aim is to introduce computing elements in the sensor that carry out common image corrections. At this stage, we will use the technology developed under the European project entitled "SmartSpectra" for the acquisition of remote sensed imagery. On the other hand, a complementary goal is the analysis and modeling of directional effects over the estimation of the Earth surface temperature at a global scale (from data supplied by on-board sensors, such as AATSR in ENVISAT, and SEVIRI in 2nd Generation Meteosat), but also at a local scale (from foreseen multiangular sensors in future ESA missions; e.g. SPECTRA).

This project proposes the integration of five research teams belonging to three different universities, which hold wide experience in these kinds of technologies. This structure will ensure inter-disciplinary knowledge to cover all planned actions. All the groups in this project incorporate young researchers with in-depth knowledge on data analysis and processing. In addition, a fundamental tenet in this framework is to promote exchange of researchers among universities.

All activities proposed herein are under the scope and framework of recently approved and on-going ESA projects. This feature will allow the research team to own hyperspectral data and necessary resources provided by ESA, given that the participants take part in different missions, they are involved in programmed campaigns for further data acquisition, and the proposed area to be studied has been designed to be a Core Site for data evaluation in several missions, including the experimental technology PROBA mission by ESA.