A long period of collaboration between Safire and Onera had a sucessful landmak in 2019. In fact, this ambitious “Airborne Remote Sensing Research Platform” project ended its program of technical validation flights on Météo-France's ATR42 in February 2019. The TERRISCOPE project, led by Onera, aims to pool very high-tech airborne optical instruments. It is supported by the European Union and the Occitanie Region under ERDF funding, as well as Sofradir, Boreal, M3Systèmes and Leosphere.
From the first week of the flights, Riegl's 3D Lidar for the first time integrated on a "large aircraft", the FENIX hyperspectral camera also mounted for the first time on the SAFIRE ATR and the 2 TELOPS infrared cameras allowed to obtain a sum of data that the Onera Toulouse teams are now processing. The second week was devoted to the first flight of the Wind Lidar called "LIVE", an instrument using an innovative laser amplifier developed by the Department of Optics and Associated Techniques (DOTA) of Onera. For that too, the results seem promising.
Long and meticulous upstream work was necessary, not only to prepare for flights and equip the aircraft, but also to obtain the certification of instruments, most of which were prototypes. The exceptional weather conditions in February contributed to the success of this campaign which finalizes the airborne component of the TERRISCOPE project, but the success of the 13.5 hours of flight accomplished highlight above all the exemplary commitment and coordination of all the participants to this project.
For the future, the seven ATR configurations being certified and the four ones for the Piper will allow various measurement campaigns to be carried out with the shared instruments of the Onera platform. Thus, the Terriscope platform constitutes a unique means of passive and active airborne remote sensing making it possible to carry out both scientific research (study of the natural or artificial environment surrounding an anthropogenic activity), as well as more applied work, in particular those related to surveillance, security and defense.
