Airborne Project Description

The Pushbroom Imager for Cloud and Aerosol Research and Development (PICARD) is a hyperspectral imager that completed its first official science campaign in September 2024 for the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX). Flying onboard the NASA's Earth Resources-2 (ER-2) and other high-altitude aircraft, PICARD is a Visible Near-Infrared – Shortwave Infrared (VNIR-SWIR) airborne imaging spectrometer that operates over a wavelength range of 400 nm – 2400 nm and is designed to target clouds and aerosols. PICARD’s design is also intended to produce a distortion-free 50° field-of-view over cloud and aerosol scenes, wider than other contemporary pushbroom spectrometers. This wide field-of-view from a high altitude affords a synoptic view of regional-scale atmospheric phenomena and facilitates cross-comparisons with satellite-derived images (e.g., MODIS, VIIRS, etc.).

The PACE-PAX campaign comprised 14 ER-2 flights in August-September 2024 over 218 flight tracks. Geographically, the campaign’s data-collection locations focused on California, Nevada, Oregon, Southwestern U.S., and Pacific Ocean.

Data Product Information

The LAADS DAAC archives and serves the PICARD L1B collection that for PACE-PAX includes 218 Level-1B datasets acquired over August-September 2024. Users may directly access and download these datasets from the LAADS DAAC.

Related Information/Links

Hoffmann, G., et al. (2025). Introducing NASA’s Pushbroom Imager for Cloud and Aerosol Research and Development (PICARD): a compact hyperspectral radiometer for ER-2 and G-III aircraft. In Optical Sensors (pp. SM3D-2). Optica Publishing Group.

https://asapdata.arc.nasa.gov/picard/index.html

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/instruments/picard

https://espo.nasa.gov/pace-pax