The AquaSat-1 Mission Concept: Actionable Information on Water Quality and Aquatic Ecosystems for Australia and Western USA

We present the preliminary results of a study conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to demonstrate the utility of imaging spectroscopy from space to provide actionable information on water quality and aquatic ecosystems for Australia and Western USA. Mission requirements are derived from three key application objectives: potentially harmful algal blooms and nutrient pollution, invasive aquatic vegetation, and coral reef habitat benthic cover. The proposed AquaSat-1 instrument is a state-of-the-art visible to near-infrared (VNIR) Dyson imaging spectrometer, which builds on over 30 years of imaging spectroscopy development at JPL.