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NPP VIIRS On-Orbit Calibration and Characterization Using the MoonThe Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is one of five instruments on-board the Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite that launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Oct. 28, 2011. VIIRS has been scheduled to view the Moon approximately monthly with a spacecraft roll maneuver after its NADIR door open on November 21, 2011. To reduce the uncertainty of the radiometric calibration due to the view geometry, the lunar phase angles of the scheduled lunar observations were confined in the range from -56 deg to -55 deg in the first three scheduled lunar observations and then changed to the range from -51.5 deg to -50.5 deg, where the negative sign for the phase angles indicates that the VIIRS views a waxing moon. Unlike the MODIS lunar observations, most scheduled VIIRS lunar views occur on the day side of the Earth. For the safety of the instrument, the roll angles of the scheduled VIIRS lunar observations are required to be within [-14 deg, 0 deg] and the aforementioned change of the phase angle range was aimed to further minimize the roll angle required for each lunar observation while keeping the number of months in which the moon can be viewed by the VIIRS instrument each year unchanged. The lunar observations can be used to identify if there is crosstalk in VIIRS bands and to track on-orbit changes in VIIRS Reflective Solar Bands (RSB) detector gains. In this paper, we report our results using the lunar observations to examine the on-orbit crosstalk effects among NPP VIIRS bands, to track the VIIRS RSB gain changes in first few months on-orbit, and to compare the gain changes derived from lunar and SD/SDSM calibration.
Document ID
20120015053
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Sun, J. (Sigma Space Corp. Lanham, MD, United States)
Xiong, X. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Butler, J. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 26, 2013
Publication Date
August 12, 2012
Subject Category
Instrumentation And Photography
Report/Patent Number
GSFC.CPR.6964.2012
Meeting Information
Meeting: SPIE Optics and Photonics 2012
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: August 12, 2012
End Date: August 16, 2012
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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