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This paper demonstrates the potential of employment of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (mUAS) for environmental research applications and the research of natural waterway systems in particular. Specifically, we describe the recent advances in the field of navigation technologies, and methodologies for high-precision determination of position and orientation of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), which weight does not exceed 5 kg. Although the MAV systems feature high flexibility and capability of flying into areas that are inhospitable or inaccessible to humans, the lack of precision in positioning and attitude estimation on-board decreases the gained value of the captured imagery. This limits their mode of operation to indirect georeferencing. We present a development of MAVs which can overcome such limitations due to the incorporation of a surveying grade GNSS receiver and an in-house developed Redundant Inertial Measurement Unit (R-IMU). In particular, we focus on physical integration, synchronization and quality evaluation of navigation components. After calibrating the data acquisition system, we present preliminary results from a real mapping flight.

Though the ISPRS has had standardization on its agenda for a long time the progress was slow and the output of completed document is still limited. The reasons are manifold: lack of awareness of standardization, necessary alignment with the standardization of geographic information done by the ISO/TC 211, emerging of new sensors while standardization work was ongoing, and the lack of technical consensus on many details such as data formats. Initiated by EuroSDR and ISPRS the EuroCOW workshop in January 2006 brought experts together who represented the leading edge of the new generation of airborne imaging sensors. This article is intended to be a starting point for the necessary discussion about an orientation and calibration standard that fulfills modern requirements. Three authors give their views on the topic and point to essential components of a standard in the future.

The basic components of the future German satellite mission EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program) are the project management led by the Space Agency of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) located in Bonn-Oberkassel, the space segment consisting of the satellite bus and the hyperspectral instrument established by Kayser Threde in Munich and OHB-Systems in Bremen, the science advisory group headed by GFZ (Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum) and the ground segment led by DLR. The ground segment is responsible for the establishment of missions operations (e.g. satellite and instrument control), provision of the payload ground segment services (e.g. data reception, operational processing, archiving, user interfacing, product handling) and development of the processor/calibration/validation (PCV) system. This paper describes briefly the EnMAP mission, the mission objectives, the instrument and satellite bus characteristics, the ground segment structure and mainly addresses the concept and activities within the PCV sub-system, which is responsible for the generation of high quality hyperspectral data products