A conference on remote sensing from hyperspectral satellites will be held next week at Tel Aviv University

The conference will be sponsored by the European Remote Sensing Laboratories EARSEL and the European Space Agency

On March 16-21, 2009, an international conference will be held at Tel Aviv University on the subject of observing the Earth and nearby celestial bodies from space using satellites and an innovative technology developed in the last decade known as hyperspectral remote sensing (HMS). The chairman of the conference is Prof. Eil Ben Dor, head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory, Department of Geography and the Human Environment, Tel Aviv University.

This technology makes it possible for the first time to receive images that are accompanied by precise chemical information about each object in the image, from a distance of hundreds of kilometers without contact and without prior information. The above technology makes it possible to identify objects with the same color, to discover targets that are not visible to the human eye, as well as to create a new database of quantitative information about many parameters such as: air pollution, soil, water, man-made materials, vegetation and snow that cannot be obtained in any other way. The conference is sponsored by the European Remote Sensing Laboratories EARSEL and the European Space Agency ESA. Conference title: "Hyperspectral remote sensing: innovative technology for scientific and commercial applications for the environment".

Senior representatives from the American, Indian, German and Italian space agencies will participate in the conference and the guest of honor will be the deputy head of the European Space Agency responsible for missions to Earth. It will be attended by about 200 researchers, students, people from the electrooptics and space industries in Israel and around the world, as well as decision makers in various fields related to the earth (mineral exploration, aid to agriculture, environmental monitoring, disaster control, etc.). The conference will present innovative results of information obtained by using this technology about the mineralogy of the moon from the data of the M3 spacecraft, which only a few days ago sent the first images to the earth using the said technology and enabled accurate mapping of minerals in a large geographic area without contact. In addition, similar images from Mars from another spacecraft will also be shown, which for the first time examined the exact mineralogy of the planet.

Technologies in the fields of precision agriculture (agriculture done in a sophisticated manner in which the plant receives exactly what it needs without excess or deficiency), discovery and identification of hidden and invisible targets, identification of pollution components in the atmosphere and innovative ways to preserve the environment and ecological monitoring will also be presented. As part of the conference, a roundtable discussion will be organized with the best scientists in the field and with decision-makers who will strengthen the participation of the international community in the innovative project of the German government to launch a HMA satellite into space at the end of 2011 (ENMAP) as well as the Italian government (PRISMA).

New space programs will also be reviewed that will make use of HMA by other governments: such as China, Japan and India, which have never been published until now. The conference participants went on a two-day tour of Israel. One tour will be made to the Ramon Crater which can be seen from space as a special site that has a great impression on the decipherers of satellite images. The purpose of the tour is to convince the scientists to use the Ramon Crater as an international calibration site for long-term satellites and to create interest in this for the space agencies around the world. The conference is sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Security as well as by a number of commercial entities in Israel and around the world such as: Alof-Elbit, manufacturers of electrophotic sensors from Philadelphia, USA, Norway and Australia as well as software companies that produce advanced decoding software for the aforementioned technology.

At the conference, there will be an exhibition of these sponsors as well as frontal presentations and posters of the forefront of research in the field. At the conference, a special session will be held in honor of Prof. Itan, head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Zurich, who is retiring, for his great contribution to the development of technology in Europe. More than 30 countries will be represented at the conference, mainly from Europe, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, India, Japan, England.
Conference site