Remote gas plume sensing and imaging with NASA's Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES)

The hyperspectral thermal emission spectrometer was developed under NASA's instrument incubator program and has now completed three deployments. The scan head uses a state-of-the-art Dyson spectrometer cooled to 100K coupled to a quantum well infrared photodetector array held at 40K. The combination allows for 256 spectral channels between 7.5 mu m and 12 mu m with 512 cross track spatial pixels. Spectral features for many interesting gases fall within the instrument passband. We first review the pre-flight calibration and validation process for HyTES using a suite of instrumentation. This includes a smile measurement at two wavelengths (8.18 mu m and 10.6 mu m) as well as a concentration determination using large aperture gas cells. We then show positive gas plume detection at ranges >1000m for various cases: Ammonia gas detection from Salton Sea fumaroles, Methane detection from staged releases points in Wyoming as well as naturally occurring methane hot spots off the coast of Santa Barbara.