The German Aerospace Center DLR - namely the Applied Remote Sensing Cluster CAF and the German Space Operations Center GSOC - is responsible for the establishment of the ground segment of the future German hyperspectral satellite mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program). The Applied Remote Sensing Cluster has long lasting experiences with air- and spaceborne acquisition, processing, and analysis of hyperspectral image data. This paper mainly addresses the concept of the operational and automatic processing chain and the calibration/data quality to generate high quality data products.

The Applied Remote Sensing Cluster at the German Aerospace Center DLR has long lasting experiences with air-and spaceborne acquisition and processing of hyperspectral image data. Jointly with the German Space Operations Center it is responsible for the establishment of the ground segment of the future German hyperspectral satellite mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program) which is planned to be launched in 2013. The primary goal of EnMAP is to quantify and analyze diagnostic parameters describing key processes on the Earth's surface. Extensive calibration and validation activities are foreseen during the planned five years of operations to ensure high quality data products, which include radiometric, geometric and atmospheric correction. This paper focuses on the automatic processing chain, as well as the calibration and quality control activities for the generation of standard EnMAP products.

The basic components of the future German satellite mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program) are the project management led by the Space Agency of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) located in Bonn-Oberkassel, the space segment consisting of the satellite bus and the hyperspectral instrument established by Kayser Threde in Munich and OHB-Systems in Bremen, the science advisory group headed by GFZ (Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum) and the ground segment led by DLR. The ground segment is responsible for the establishment of missions operations (e.g. satellite and instrument control), provision of the payload ground segment services (e.g. data reception, operational processing, archiving, user interfacing, product handling) and development of the processor/calibration/validation (PCV) system. This paper describes briefly the EnMAP mission, the mission objectives, the instrument and satellite bus characteristics, the ground segment structure and mainly addresses the concept and activities within the PCV sub-system, which is responsible for the generation of high quality hyperspectral data products

The Applied Remote Sensing Cluster of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is responsible for the establishment of the payload ground segment for the future German hyperspectral satellite mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program), which is planned to be launched in 2012. EnMAP covers the spectrum from 420 nm to 2450 nm with a spectral resolution of at least 10 nm and a spatial resolution of 30 m x 30 m with a swath width of 30 km. The primary goal of EnMAP is to quantify and analyze diagnostic parameters describing key processes on the Earth’s surface. To achieve high-quality and consistent data with respect to the same and other missions, extensive calibration and validation activities are foreseen during the five years of mission operations. The calibration results will be integrated in the processing chain to obtain standardized products, which include radiometric, geometric, and atmospheric correction. Here we focus on the following three aspects of the EnMAP mission: (a) analysis of data of the various calibration sources, (b) geometric processing with precise orbit and attitude data as well as atmospheric correction, and (c) supporting ground, airborne, and spaceborne campaigns to assess the quality of the output data delivered by the processing chain.