The CHRIS satellite imager now celebrates 7 years' of scientific success of high resolution hyperspectral satellite imagery. The instrument has been so successful that an advanced variant is under development. This will offer new functionality for Earth observation missions in a wide range of applications in resource monitoring and mapping, environmental science, and security.

CHRIS (Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) was developed by SSTL's Optical Payload Group (formerly Sira Space Group), and placed into orbit in October 2001 on the PROBA mission developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The sophisticated optical earth imaging instrument recently passed its 7th year in orbit as the highest resolution civil hyperspectral instrument in space. Data from CHRIS has been highly successful in development of new Earth observation applications and is supporting 94 international Principal Investigators (PIs), acquiring images from over 240 sites in 43 countries for diverse scientific research.

The new, more advanced CHRIS-2 instrument includes the short wave infra-red band (SWIR), which allows further valuable applications to be addressed including mineralogy, prospecting, crop health, and pollution monitoring. Hyperspectral imagers split the available light from a scene into a large range of channels, providing detailed information about the imagery content. Whereas the CHRIS instrument provided up to 62 channels in the visible band, the CHRIS-2 instrument extends this capability to more than 200 bands, including the short-wave infra-red bands (SWIR). Placing such an instrument on a spacecraft provides global reach and supports national and international routine imaging campaigns efficiently. SSTL will provide the CHRIS-2 instrument on future Earth observation missions or as a stand-alone payload for integration with third party satellite platforms. The image to the left reveals PROBA's capture of the manmade islands located just off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Palm Jumeirah (left) is the smallest of three massive palm-shaped islands, and The World is a collection of 300 islets built in the shape of a world map. This image was acquired onNovember 5, 2007, by ESA’s Proba’s CHRIS instrument.