Hyperspectral Eyes in the Sky: How Space-Based Imaging Is Revolutionizing Earth Observation
NASA’s Hyperion, launched in 2000 on the EO-1 satellite, collected 220 spectral bands from 400 to 2500 nm at 30 m resolution. A hyperspectral data cube stacks hundreds of narrow wavelength bands for every ground pixel, creating a two-dimensional spatial image plus a spectral dimension. Hyperspectral imaging records hundreds of narrow bands (often 10 nm or less) enabling identification of materials by their spectral fingerprints, unlike RGB’s 3 broad bands or multispectral’s 5–30 bands. Space-based hyperspectral sensors are typically passive, in sun-synchronous low Earth orbits, and commonly use pushbroom scanning to build full images with high signal-to-noise ratio. The VNIR-SWIR
