A project of the hyperspectral small satellite about 120 kg mass based on the modern technology is presented. The project is dedicated for “Gazprom” pipelines sensing to evaluate their condition, early recognize failures and make recommendations for preventive service. The satellite is planned to provide of 5 meter resolution in 700 spectral lines of 0.3 - 1.6 μm range. The paper consists of two parts. The first part describes a small satellite which is an enhanced version of the microsatellite presented at Berlin’s IAA Symposium in 1996. To test instruments and to check the ideas employed for the development of the satellite’s onboard hyperspectral unit, an airborne version of the device was fabricated and used for northern located gas pipelines monitoring. The flight testing is successfully performed on August-September, 2000 and 2001. In the second part the results of testing of the airborne version of the hyperspectral instrument are presented. Measurement data have been processed, analyzed and used to prove the choice of small satellite characteristics.

small satellite, remote sensing, hyperspectral monitoring, airborne unit testing, data processing

Theoretical and applied problems of mechanics