ECOSTRESS end-to-end radiometric pre-flight calibration and validation (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) will measure the temperature of plants and use that information to better understand how much water plants need and how they respond to stress. The radiometer on-board the ECOSTRESS payload provides 5 TIR spectral bands with approximately 70m pixels and a nearly 400km swath. This radiometer has two on-board blackbodies to maintain calibration every sweep of the scan mirror (1.4s). The system has undergone an end-to-end test in a thermal-vacuum (TVAC) chamber showing excellent pre-flight radiometric results. This performance is in part enabled by a newly developed, high-speed, low noise, readout electronics. The readout electronics converts all 32-analog channels to digital for on-board processing and down link. Noise equivalent delta temperature (NEDT) measurements and brightness temperature (BT) retrievals are well within requirements. The optical modulation transfer function (OMTF) is also within specification.