Overview of the Nightsat mission concept

Nightsat is a concept for a satellite sensor capable of mapping of the location, extent, and brightness of nighttime lights at a spatial resolution suitable for the delineation of primary features within human settlements worldwide. Based on requirements from several fields of scientific inquiry, Nightsat should be capable of producing a complete cloud-free global map of lights on an annual basis from a near-synchronous orbit in the early evening with 50-to 100-m spatial resolution and have detection limits of 2.5E-8 Watts/cm²/sr/um or better. Although panchromatic low-light imaging data would be useful, multispectral low-light imaging data would provide valuable information on the type or character of lighting; potentially stronger predictors of variables such as ambient population density and economic activity.