NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Results and Lessons from MODIS Thermal Emissive Bands Calibration: Pre-launch to On-orbitMODIS is a major instrument for the NASA EOS Terra (launched in December 1999) and Aqua (launched in May 2002) missions. It was designed and built to enhance and extend its heritage sensors' measurements and data records with applications covering a wide range of studies of the Earth's land, oceans, and atmosphere. Its 16 thermal emissive bands (TEB), each with 10 detectors, are located on the two cold focal plane assemblies (FPAs) controlled by a passive radiative cooler. Because of instrument design complexity and stringent calibration requirements, extensive calibration and characterization activities were conducted pre-launch by the sensor vendor for both Terra and Aqua MODIS. For TEB, these activities include characterization of detectors' noise and non-linearity and evaluation of their radiometric performance in thermal vacuum at difference instrument temperatures and FPA temperatures. In addition TEB system level response versus scan-angle (RVS) and relative spectral response (RSR) were characterized. MODIS TEB radiometric calibration transfer from pre-launch to on-orbit was performed using spectral bands' responses to the instrument on-board blackbody and a laboratory blackbody calibration source (BCS) traceable to NIST standards. This paper provides a summary of MODIS TEB pre-launch and on-orbit calibration and characterization activities, challenges, data analysis results, and lessons learned with focus on sensors' radiometric performance. A comparison between Terra and Aqua MODIS TEB performance is also presented. A similar summary for the reflective solar bands (RSB) is reported in a separate paper in these proceedings.
Document ID
20070014872
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Xiong, X.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Chiang, K.
(Space Science and Technology, Inc. Lanham, MD, United States)
Barnes, W. L.
(Maryland Univ. Baltimore County Baltimore, MD, United States)
Guenther, B.
(Maryland Univ. Baltimore County Baltimore, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Meeting Information
Meeting: The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) Conference on Optics and Photonics 2006
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: August 13, 2006
End Date: August 17, 2006
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available