PEGASUS - Bridging the gap between airborne and spaceborne remote sensing

The PEGASUS project's aim is to provide an economic way to gather high resolution data (from various sensors) from a solar high altitude platform (HAP), operating in the stratosphere at 12-20 km altitude. Since the platform will be unmanned, it will be able to operate continuously for weeks or months. The platform's power will be generated by solar energy, stored in fuel cells for night time operation. A single HAP will be able to image 100 000 km(2) area at 20 cm (visual and near-IR) or at 1-2 m (thermal) pixel size, once every year. A LIDAR instrument will produce high point density coverage (0.25 - 0.5 points/m(2)), while SAR will add an all-weather, day and night observation capability. The paper describes the instrument specifications, the advantages of using a HAP versus traditional airborne and space-borne systems, and the estimated performance of this system.