From the Editors

On a clear day, you can see forever. On a cloudy day, you can still see a lot from a very great distance. Today's remote-sensing systems sample Earth and its environment more often with more spatial resolution over more of the electromagnetic spectrum than ever before.

The Aerospace Corporation has been involved in spaceborne remote sensing of Earth and its environment for more than 40 years. The corporate expertise literally spans the spectrum, from X ray, ultraviolet, visible, and infrared to microwave wavelengths and frequencies. This expertise includes physics, phenomenology, and sensing techniques as well as methods for storing, transmitting, and analyzing remote-sensing data.

Aerospace work in remote sensing has yielded considerable benefits for the defense and intelligence communities. But while Aerospace continues to focus on national security concerns, the company has also come to play a significant role in applying remote-sensing technologies to other areas of national interest.

For example, future generations of DOD's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and NOAA's polar-orbiting environmental satellites will be merged into a new NOAA/DOD/NASA program called NPOESS (National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System). This integrated system will eventually boast some of the most diverse and sophisticated sensors ever sent into orbit. Aerospace has been reviewing plans for NPOESS in terms of both technology and policy. The goal is to help effect a smooth transition while ensuring that the demands of the military, scientific, and commercial sectors are appropriately balanced.

NPOESS is emblematic of a greater change within the remote-sensing field, which has witnessed a remarkable increase in capabilities outside the military sector. In fact, DOD has become the largest customer for commercial satellite imagery at 1-meter resolution—and this demand is prompting development of even finer optical systems. At the same time, instruments such as the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (which flew aboard the latest DMSP satellite) and the Conical-scanning Microwave Imager/Sounder (which will fly on NPOESS) are pushing the limits of satellite-based sensing. Synthetic-aperture imaging ladar—an area in which Aerospace offers unequalled expertise—may well usher in the next technology leap.

This issue of Crosslink presents a broad overview of Aerospace work in remote sensing, including historical programs, dominant methodologies, information processing, policymaking, and next-generation techniques. We hope it will provide an interesting introduction while spotlighting some of Aerospace's visionary research in the field.

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