AEISS-A

Overview

AEISS-A (Advanced Earth Imaging Sensor System-A) is a high-resolution pushbroom electro-optical camera flown on the KOMPSAT-3A satellite, launched 25 March 2015 and declared fully operational in September 2015.^[1] It provides 0.55 m panchromatic (PAN) and 2.2 m multispectral (MS) imagery,^[2] and includes an Infrared Imaging System (IIS) mid-wave infrared channel.^[1]

Optical design

AEISS-A uses a Korsch three-mirror anastigmat telescope with an 80 cm primary aperture and 8.6 m focal length.^[1] The PAN focal plane uses a 24,000-pixel time-delay integration (TDI) line array with 8.75 µm pixel pitch.^[3] The MS focal plane uses four arrays of 6,000 pixels each (35 µm pixel pitch) with binning, producing blue, green, red, and near-infrared bands.^[1] KOMPSAT-3A operates at 528 km altitude, which gives the 0.55 m PAN GSD cited in KARI documentation.^[2] The camera delivers 12 km swath at 14-bit radiometric depth.^[4]

Infrared Imaging System (IIS)

IIS is a single-channel MWIR imager covering 3.3-5.2 µm,^[4] with a mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) focal plane array cooled to 80 K.^[1] It provides 5.5 m GSD over the same 12 km swath as the EO channels,^[1] enabling day-and-night thermal imaging for applications including fire detection, volcanic activity monitoring, and disaster response.^[1] A wavelength discrepancy between source documents (3-5 µm vs 3.3-5.2 µm) is noted; 3.3-5.2 µm is taken from the more detailed operator datasheet.^[4]

Observation applications

Optical time-series change detection has been demonstrated using KOMPSAT-3A imagery.^[1] Vegetation index mapping has been demonstrated with the multispectral channels.^[1] Land surface temperature and emissivity retrieval has been demonstrated using the IIS thermal channel.^[1]

Geometric calibration

A geometric calibration and validation study of the AEISS-A camera using ground control points and stereo tie points is documented in peer-reviewed literature.^[3]