EnMAP

EnMAP is a German hyperspectral Earth observation satellite [^eoportal-enmap] designed to characterise Earth's surface by measuring solar radiation reflected across the full VNIR-SWIR spectral range, from 420 to 2450 nm [^enmap-mission]. Launched 1 April 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-4 rideshare mission [^eoportal-enmap], EnMAP entered routine operations on 2 November 2022 following a six-month in-orbit commissioning and calibration campaign [^enmap-ops-nov2022].

The mission is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) and managed by the German Space Agency at DLR in Bonn on BMWK's behalf [^dlr-enmap]. The satellite was built by OHB System AG of Bremen as prime contractor using the OHB LEOBus-1000 bus platform [^eoportal-enmap]. On-orbit operations are conducted by DLR's Earth Observation Center (EOC) at Oberpfaffenhofen; scientific coordination is led by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam [^dlr-enmap].

The sole payload is the Hyperspectral Imager (HSI), a pushbroom imaging spectrometer built around a shared three-mirror anastigmat telescope feeding two prism-based spectrometers [^eoportal-enmap]. The VNIR channel covers 420-1000 nm across 99 bands at 6.5 nm spectral sampling, detected by a back-thinned CMOS focal plane array (Fairchild Imaging) [^eoportal-enmap]. The SWIR channel covers 900-2450 nm across 163 bands at 10 nm sampling, detected by a mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) array cooled to 150 K by an onboard pulse tube cooler [^eoportal-enmap]. Both channels share a 30 m ground sample distance, 30 km swath, and 14-bit radiometric resolution [^enmap-mission][^eoportal-enmap].

EnMAP occupies a 653 km sun-synchronous orbit with an 11:00 local time of descending node and a 27-day nadir repeat cycle [^eoportal-enmap]. Off-nadir pointing of up to 30 degrees in the cross-track direction enables a revisit capability of approximately 4 days [^enmap-mission]. The satellite can collect up to 5,000 km of imagery per day.

EnMAP data is freely available to registered users under the EnMAP Data License v1.1. Acquisition requests are submitted through the instrument planning portal at planning.enmap.org; archived data is accessible via DLR's EOWEB portal and via a STAC endpoint at DLR's EOC Geoservice [^dlr-geoservice]. Three product levels are distributed: L1B (top-of-atmosphere radiance), L1C (geocoded radiance), and L2A (surface reflectance, atmospherically corrected using the ATCOR-based processor). Standard delivery occurs within six days of downlink. The L2A collection covers 224 usable bands across VNIR and SWIR; four bands in strong atmospheric water vapour absorption windows near 1350-1400 nm and 1800-1950 nm are masked in the standard product [^dlr-stac-enmap-l2a].

The mission targets a broad range of application domains: geological mapping and mineral exploration (exploiting diagnostic SWIR absorption features of clay, carbonate, sulphate, and phyllosilicate minerals), soil characterisation, vegetation condition and composition monitoring, inland and coastal water quality, agricultural crop analysis, cryosphere studies, urban surface material identification, and atmospheric monitoring including methane detection [^enmap-mission][^eoportal-enmap].