Advances in the Hyperspectral Imager ANFA and It Is Role in the Colombian LEOPAR Satellite Mission

Colombia is an emerging space nation currently transitioning from being an operator of space systems to becoming a satellite manufacturer. The LEOPAR mission represents Colombia’s fourth satellite development endeavor. It entails a 3U CubeSat platform equipped with a hyperspectral camera known as ANFA, designed for remote sensing in the spectral range of 450 to 900 nm. Its primary objective is to identify vegetation and deforested areas across Colombian territory. The design and implementation of ANFA, in its initial phase as a laboratory prototype, underwent multiple iterations to align with mission requirements based on the state of the art. Rigorous laboratory tests have successfully validated the payload’s proper operation in terms of optical, mechanical, and electronic aspects of operational concepts. The ANFA laboratory prototype was developed using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices to emulate the optical subsystem and integrate it with the electronic subsystem. This prototype achieved scene capture, data transmission through the SPI protocol to the instrument’s main microcontroller, data processing, storage in an SD memory card, and image reconstruction to identify spectral signatures across each pixel in the hyperspectral data cube. Simultaneously, significant progress has been made in designing the optoelectronic detection chain for ANFA, based on the development of a radiometric model for analyzing a reference scene and transforming scene reflectance to Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). Subsequently, we plan to calculate the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) performance parameter as a tool to select a suitable detector for our hyperspectral camera, meeting the requirements of the LEOPAR mission. Once this process is completed, the goal is to scale the prototype to an engineering model and, ultimately, a flight model. The vision is for ANFA to become the first Colombian hyperspectral instrument launched into space, thereby aligning this development with ongoing hyperspectral initiatives worldwide.