Optimal design of an ideal instrumentation package for high-resolution characterization of wildfires from small-satellite constellations

Wildfires and other types of biomass burning are estimated to consume biomass containing 2–5 petagrams of carbon globally every year, generating intense heat energy, transforming the landscape, and emitting smoke plumes that comprise different species of aerosols and trace gases, which can have adverse effects on human health, air quality, and environmental processes. Existing spaceborne systems observe fires at coarse spatial resolutions (0.33–4 km) and saturate at 325–700K brightness temperatures, whereas vegetation fire scene components can range from surface background (~300K) to smoldering (600–800K) and flaming (1000–1500K) temperatures. Current uncertainties associated with fire emissions are ~100%. With recent technological advancements, it is becoming increasingly possible to raise sensor saturation levels to accommodate background to flaming temperatures at high spatial resolutions. By leveraging new technologies in compact optical and detector-array designs, low power electronics, and low power active cooling systems, we have designed a small fire-science instrument package that can measure fire temperatures of up to 1500K at ~50-m spatial resolution. This instrument can be built to fit in a 12U (20×20×30 cm) or smaller form factor for easy adaptability either as a free-flying CubeSat or as a hosted payload on other small or large spacecraft. It is anticipated that the completion and launch of this optimal instrumentation package would offer unprecedented advancement in our ability to determine fire intensity, emissivity, and flaming/smoldering properties in detail and with high accuracy, thereby providing significantly improved capacity for fire disaster preparedness and emissions characterization.