An agreement between the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Israeli Space Agency (ISA) will see SELEX Galileo designing, developing and delivering a new hyperspectral instrument for the SHALOM mission.
SHALOM (Spaceborn Hyperspectral Applicative Land and Ocean Mission) is a joint ASI-ISA Earth observation programme. Phase A of the programme, a study to define the satellite’s configuration and payload, starts now and will be completed by the beginning of 2013.
SELEX Galileo’s hyperspectral instrument will meet SHALOM’s stringent requirements both in terms of high spectral resolution and medium space resolution, and will be able to obtain spectral images in a large number of narrow and contiguous spectral bands.
To achieve this, the company will benefit from the experience in hyperspectral design that it has accrued working on its PRISMA hyperspectral instrument and on the spectrometers successfully flying on a number of important ASI funded scientific instruments on board missions including Cassini, Rosetta, Venus-Express, Dawn and Juno.
"Our expertise in hyperspectral instruments has previously allowed us to contribute to the Italian national space programme with the PRISMA Earth Observation system and now qualifies us to meet the stretching requirements of this joint project between the Italian and Israeli Space Agencies," said Fabrizio Giulianini, SELEX Galileo CEO, adding: "This agreement underlines our leadership in electro-optics for space missions."
The hyperspectral images will have several civil applications such as environmental monitoring and risk management.