Abstract
Since its launch in May 2013, the in-orbit radiometric performance of PROBA-V has been continuously monitored. Due to the absence of on-board calibration devices, in-flight performance monitoring and calibration relies fully on vicarious calibration methods. In this paper, the multiple vicarious calibration techniques used to verify radiometric accuracy and to perform calibration parameter updates are discussed. Details are given of the radiometric calibration activities during both the commissioning and operational phase. The stability of the instrument in terms of overall radiometry and dark current is analyzed. Results of an independent comparison against MERIS and SPOT VEGETATION-2 are presented. Finally, an outlook is provided of the on-going activities aimed at improving both data consistency over time and within-scene uniformity.
Highlights
The PROBA-V instrument was launched by a Vega Rocket from Kourou on 7 May 2013.Operational data is available from 15 October 2013 onwards, after completion of the commissioning phase
On-orbit radiometric performance is continuously monitored and calibration parameter updates are regularly performed to ensure that the radiometric accuracy requirements are met
The radiometric values of the PROBA-V L1C VNIR data appear to be situated between the MERIS radiometric values and SPOT VGT-2 ones
Summary
The PROBA-V instrument was launched by a Vega Rocket from Kourou on 7 May 2013. Operational data is available from 15 October 2013 onwards, after completion of the commissioning phase. The on-orbit monitoring of the instrument radiometric performance has to rely solely on vicarious methods To this end, the Image Quality Center (IQC), which is in charge of the in-flight calibration, has developed a vicarious Cal/Val facility dedicated to the routine calibration of spaceborne sensors. The facility contains, among other things, the OSCAR (Optical Sensor CAlibration with simulated Radiance) tools which exploit the reflected radiance over bright desert surfaces [2], Deep Convective Clouds (DCC), and atmospheric molecules or Rayleigh scattering [3]. These OSCAR tools make it possible to evaluate the absolute, inter-band and multi-temporal radiometric accuracy. An outlook is provided of the radiometric planned for the following period
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