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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Satellite Missions
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2024.1436898
This article is part of the Research Topic Instruments and Technologies for Existing and Future Earth Observation Satellite Missions View all 3 articles

Falcon Neuro -Space-based observations of lightning using event-based sensors

Provisionally accepted
Matthew McHarg Matthew McHarg 1*Imogen R. Jones Imogen R. Jones 2Zachary J. Wilcox Zachary J. Wilcox 3Richard L. Balthazor Richard L. Balthazor 3Alexandre Marcireau Alexandre Marcireau 4Gregory K. Cohen Gregory K. Cohen 4
  • 1 United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, United States
  • 2 MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Sydney, Australia
  • 3 i2 Strategic Services in Cooperative Agreement with United States Air Force Academy, Air Force Academy, United States
  • 4 International Centre for Neuromorphic Systemsn, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The observation of lightning from space can have several advantages, including views of the tops of clouds facilitating the study of in-cloud lightning; as well as a world-wide access provided by the orbital parameters of the satellite. Given the brief duration of lightning, current space-based lighting monitors are necessarily complex in order to resolve both the spatial and temporal features of the lighting discharge. Event-based sensors provides a new low-cost way to use a commercial camera to study ligtning from space. The Falcon Neuro mission comprises two Event-Based Vision Sensors, attached to the Columbus Module of the International Space Station. It's mission is to detect lightning and related electrical discharges in Earth's atmosphere.This paper reports on initial data collection and analysis of lightning by the United States Air Force Academy and Western Sydney University.

    Keywords: Event based camera, lightning, space, Falcon Neuro, Neuromorphic

    Received: 22 May 2024; Accepted: 15 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 McHarg, Jones, Wilcox, Balthazor, Marcireau and Cohen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Matthew McHarg, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, United States

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