The Headwall Blog

"Claire" is the nickname of a mini-satellite officially named GHGSat-D that launched in June of 2016 and shortly thereafter began delivering images using its Headwall hyperspectral SWIR sensor. Claire's mission is to help industries better understand their greenhouse gas emissions, enabling them to control and ultimately reduce them. For example, Claire can help coal mine and landfill operators find significant leaks of methane, then measure those leaks to justify a business case for gas-fired electricity generation.

Headwall Mid-West Regional Sales Engineer Christopher Piper, Senior Application Scientist Will Rock, Ph.D., and Senior UAV Pilot Charles Kepler hosted a free flight demo and an exclusive presentation by Headwall at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attended the opening ceremony of the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 2019 held at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center in Yokohama from July 28 to August 2. The symposium is considered a premier event in remote sensing and the Headwall Photonics booth was busy.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is using Headwall's hyperspectral SWIR sensor as part of Operation Night Watch, an ambitious project launched on July 8 to utilize the most advanced scientific imaging technologies to capture multiple aspects of Rembrandt's 1642 work.

Headwall customer Associate Professor Felipe Gonzalez, at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Institute for Future Environments and the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision is using Headwall hyperspectral imaging from airborne UAVs to monitor and analyze the health of the Great Barrier Reef has received part of the $50 million AI for Earth program by Microsoft.

NASA's Operation Ice Bridge (OIB) images the Earth’s polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand processes that connect the polar regions with the global climate system.

Douglas DC-8, GulfStream V, Lockheed Martin P-3, and de Havilland Twin Otter flights provide a multi-instrument look at the behavior of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.

Supraglacial lake observations using thermal imaging and spectra from a Headwall Nano-Hyperspec^® VNIR sensor (left). Image from NASA Operation IceBridge Overview 2018.

Headwall Co-Aligned and SWIR sensors are utilized for hyperspectral imaging. These operate in temperatures well below normal operating conditions, and Headwall support personnel sometimes provide remote troubleshooting to personnel, who may be on satellite phone in flight.

The Systems and Technologies for Remote Sensing Applications Through Unmanned Aerial Systems (STRATUS) workshop at the Rochester Institute of Technology is always fun yet educational, and a great opportunity for those of us in industry to meet with researchers and students.

The November 2018 issue of Poultry Digital magazine features a "Foreign Intelligence" article (pages 10-13) on how imaging technology can reduce or eliminate poultry production line pollution. Headwall hyperspectral cameras can detect the spectral "fingerprint" of contamination such as fecal matter or the hallmarks of diseases such as septicemia and toxemia.