Fundamental Characteristics of a Balloon Observation System (BOS) and Some Application Measurements

Development of a Low Altitude Remote Sensing Platform

Abstract

A balloon observation system aiming at taking remote sensing data at arbitrary date and hour and taking top views of the existing circumstances in detail has been developed. It was. approved that images almost corresponding to Band 1-Band 4 of Landsat TM with much higher space reso lution could be obtained except only for rainy and strong windy hours. For example, the size and space resolution of the image taken from the balloon altitude of 250 m are about 250 m×190m and about 9.7 cm, respectively. Application experiments to waterweeds monitoring, etc. were successfully performed.