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Monitoring and management of inland and coastal water quality is essential for safe drinking water, for recreational and agricultural uses, and for preserving freshwater and marine ecosystems. Satellite data are often used for inland and coastal water observations but with severe limitations: current space-based sensors have insufficient spatial resolution to capture many inland and near-coastal waters, or insufficient spectral resolution or signal-to-noise ratio to discern several water quality variables that are important to end-users. CSIRO and NASA JPL are collaborating on an 18-month feasibility study for the AquaSat-1 mission concept, which aims to demonstrate measurement of optical water quality indicators from space for a set of key inland and coastal waters in Australia and western USA. The proposed AquaSat-1 payload is a state-of-the-art visible to near-infrared Dyson imaging spectrometer developed by JPL, with a design based on JPL’s EMIT instrument currently operating from the International Space Station. In this presentation, I’ll give an overview of the feasibility study, results so far, and next steps. |
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