This paper outlines the rationale and design for an enhanced Airborne Remote Sensing (ARS) facility, being implemented by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the U.K., to support environmental research and monitoring. It is based on the provision of a suite of optical remote sensing instruments, available for year-round deployment, and the development of an on-board integrated data acquisition, and ground-based data processing, system. Acquisition of the remotely sensed data will be synchronized with attitude/position information from a global positioning satellite (GPS) system to enable an accurate geometric rectification to be performed. A strategy has been devised for the end-to-end ground processing of this data to enable the production of standard data products and distribution in a sensor-independent data format. The facility has been fully operational from Spring 1997 and is ready to support the needs of environmental scientists and organizations requiring high quality, and immediately usable, airborne remotely sensed data products.
