A conceptual ground processing system for operational land remote sensing satellites

A nonexperimental, or 'operational,' land remote-sensing satellite system will become a reality during this decade. The spatial resolution and number of spectral bands of such a system could exceed those of the current Landsat systems and result in a data stream as large as 10 to the 12th bits per day, transmitted at rates as high as 150 million bits per second. The ground processing equipment required to support such an operational remote-sensing system must be flexible enough to archive the data, generate products, and provide the timely distribution of products from a volume of data an order of magnitude larger than that handled by current ground processing systems. More importantly, the new ground processing system must expand the services and products provided to the user of operational remotely-sensed data. A conceptual design of a system to provide these capabilities has been developed which is centered around an optical mass memory and multiple access stations for data entry, product generation, and product distribution.