The Reduced Envelope Multispectral Infrared Radiometer (REMIR): A Proposed Airborne Demonstrator for Future Landsat Architectures

The Reduced Envelope Multispectral Infrared Radiometer (REMIR) is a proposed airborne instrument system to demonstrate the next step in meeting the Landsat 11 Mission thermal band requirements. REMIR leverages NASA and Ball investments in scanning approach, innovative calibration subsystems, and new detectors, that enable significant reductions in size, weight, and power (SWaP) compared to the existing Landsat architecture. The Wide Angle Scan Mirror (WASM) on the Reduced Envelope Multispectral Imager (REMI, NASA-SLI-T 2015) is the foundation for REMIR, allowing two dimensional step-stare scanning to meet performance requirements. REMI successfully demonstrated this approach in-flight to meet SLI-T performance requirements for VSWIR imaging defined in 2015. Recently, a carbon nanotube calibration system and TIR microbolometer focal plane array (FPA) have been demonstrated on-orbit with the Compact Infrared Radiometer in Space (CIRiS of NASA-InVEST 2015). A modified CIRiS is proposed to be added into the existing REMI system to extend the VNIR-SWIR spectral range capability out into the TIR—meeting the new 2019 reference mission architecture (RMA) TIR requirements. In addition, recent developments in commercial microbolometer FPA technology are incorporated to increase swath/decrease revisit time. REMIR is proposed to demonstrate the step-stare approach to achieve the 2019 RMA performance in the thermal bands, along with the legacy (2015) VNIR-SWIR performance, in a single aperture, compact, full-spectral airborne instrument system.