A low-cost system for reception and processing of line-scan data from LANDSAT and other sources

A low-cost transportable earth resources ground station was built in Canada and installed to operational status at Shoe Cove, Newfoundland. The system concepts developed for this station provide timely availability of data in both photographic and digital form. The system was designed with several objectives in mind: (1) to provide a system which could receive, store and process line-scan image data from a wide variety of satellites, most especially the LANDSAT and NOAA (VHRR) series, as well as aircraft scanner data, and data from future remote sensing and meteorological satellites; (2) the system has been designed to be operated by a small staff and to produce black and white images and computer-compatible tapes (CCT's) of all relevant data; (3) the system is compact in its physical design so that it is possible to configure it as a self-contained ground station, housed in a 3 x 12 meter trailer; (4) the system is designed to process all data at real-time rates or better and is designed in a modular fashion so that it can be easily upgraded to do further processing of the data, and/or to handle new satellites and sensors.