SIOS’s Airborne remote sensing platforms

SIOS actively supports usage of airborne remote sensing platforms (aircraft and drones) for research purposes. The technical and operational details of the available airborne platforms are as follows:

The SIOS Research Aircraft - Dornier 228 LN-LYR

SIOS member institution NORCE has installed and tested a suite of optical imaging sensors on the Lufttransport Dornier aircraft stationed in Longyearbyen, as part of the SIOS-InfraNor project. The aircraft is configured to acquire aerial imagery and hyperspectral remote sensing data in addition to its normal transport operation. The aircraft flies regular flights from Longyearbyen to Ny-Ålesund and Svea, as well as around 20 flights a year to Station Nord in Greenland. The aircraft is also available to charter.

Remote sensing capacities of the aircraft

Optical Payloads:

• Hyperspectral imager with 32 degrees field of view
  
  • VNIR-1800 (https://www.hyspex.com/hyspex-products/hyspex-classic/hyspex-vnir-1800/)
  • 1800 spatial pixels, 186 spectral bands in the range 400-1000 nm (~3.26 nm spectral sampling)
  • ~600 meter across track coverage from 1000 m altitude, with ~30 cm ground resolution.
• Medium format RGB camera
  
  • PhaseOne IXU-150 RGB camera (https://www.mapping-solutions.co.uk/downloads/data/pdf/PO150.pdf)
  • ~800 meter across track coverage from 1000 m altitude.

Other Payloads:

• GNSS Applanix POS AV 410 navigation system.
• Radionor CRE2-179-UAV broadband radio (5.862 GHz)
  
  • Up to 15Mbit/s and 200km range
  • Useful for uploading data from buoys and sensor arrays in remote areas
• Kongsberg Seatex AIS-300
  
  • Record and transmit AIS data

Products:

• Georeferenced product
  
  • By proper postprocessing of the navigational data, direct georeferencing with an accuracy of up to 0.5-pixel accuracy is achievable.

Space prepared for future expansion with:

• Hyperspectral (SWIR 900 – 2500nm)
• SAR sensor
• Thermal camera
• Laser scanner

Operational capacities of the aircraft:

• Normal range:  2400 km
• Max endurance: 6:45 hours
• Max take-off mass: 6200 Kg
• Max altitude: 15000 feet
• Cruise speed: 180 knots
• Seat capacity: 2 pilots / 17 passengers

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/ drones for remote sensing applications

SIOS provides opportunity to use drones funded by the SIOS-InfraNor project, and other drones available with UNIS drone group & NORCE. NORCE has an extensive RO3 operator permit for drone operation. Under this operator permit there is an operating agreement for UNIS to operate, and personnel at UNIS have been trained for this purpose. Presently, DJI’s multicopters (Inspire 1 and 2, Mavic Enterprise Dual and Zoom, Phantom 4 pro) are available for conducting operations. With these types of drones, flights up to 20 minutes are possible and the operating distance about 1-2 Km.

Remote sensing capacities of drones

Drones are equipped with optical imaging sensors – from visible range to infrared. Additional sensor – Intermet iMet XQ2 (sensor including atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity, GPS coordinates, rechargeable battery and data logger) – can be added to Mavic or Phantom to measure air temperature and humidity profile in atmospheric boundary layer up to 500 m above groundlevel. The ground resolution depends on the height of the multicopter. Each flight session (20 min) can collect up to a few gigabytes (GB) of images (raw data).

List of drones available for operation

Please contact remotesensing@sios-svalbard.org if you need more information on usage of drones and Dornier for your project activity.