The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), being funded by the National Science Foundation, is a continental-scale research platform for discovering, understanding and forecasting the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. Local site-based flux tower and field measurements will be coordinated with high resolution, regional airborne remote sensing observations. The Land Use Analysis Package (LUAP) provides a linkage to scaling to continental scale by providing access to satellite data sets. The NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) consists of an aircraft platform carrying remote sensing instrumentation designed to achieve sub-meter to meter scale ground resolution to bridge scales from organism and stand scales to the scale of satellite based remote sensing. Data from the AOP will be openly available to the science community and will provide quantitative information on land use change, changes in vegetation state and performance including the presence and effects of invasive species. Remote sensing instrumentation consists of an imaging spectrometer measuring surface reflectance over the continuous wavelength range from 400 to 2500 nm with 10 nm resolution, a scanning, small footprint waveform recording LiDAR for 3-D structure measurements and a high resolution airborne digital camera. The AOP science objectives, key mission requirements, the conceptual design and development status will be presented.