Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 Characterization

Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 CharacterizationJoel McCorkel1, Matthew Montanaro1, Boryana Efremova1,

Aaron Pearlman1, Brian Wenny1, Jason Hair21Biospheric Sciences Laboratory (618), 2Instruments Projects Division (498)

Earth Sciences Division – Hydrosphere, Biosphere, and Geophysics

The TIRS-2 (Figure 1) spectral, spatial and radiometric response is derived using measurements made with the Calibration Ground Support Equipment (Figure 2) during subsystem level testing held Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 and instrument-level testing in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. These measurements also characterize the instrument and provide NIST traceability for the on-board blackbody (Figure 3).

Figure 1: TIRS-2 Telescope/Detector subassembly lowered into instrument structure

Figure 2: Calibration Ground Support Equipment

Figure 3: TIRS-2 On-board Blackbody

1-meter collimator housingSteering

mirror

TIRS-2 detector and telescope subsystem

Name: Joel McCorkel, Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA GSFC E-mail: [email protected]: 301-614-6675

References:J.H. Hair, M. Djam, S.L. Tonn, D.C. Reuter, A.A. Simon, J. McCorkel, M. Montanaro, “Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 Architecture and

Design Overview,” Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2018.J. McCorkel, M. Montanaro, B. Efremova, A. Pearlman, Brian Wenny, et al., “Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 Characterization Plan

Overview,” Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2018.B. Efremova, A.J. Pearlman, J. McCorkel, M. Montanaro, M. Hickey, A. Lunsford, D.C. Reuter, “Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor 2

Preliminary Spectral Test Results,” Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2018.M. Montanaro, J. McCorkel, J. Tveekrem, J. Stauder, J.H. Hair, D.C. Reuter, “Landsat 9 TIRS-2 Preliminary Stray Light Assessment,”

Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2018.

Figure 1: TIRS-2 telescope and detector subassembly integration. Photo credit, Desiree Stovers.Figure 2: Calibration Ground Support Equipment is an assembly used to generate several types of light sources that assist in characterizing the spectral, spatial, and radiometric response of TIRS-2. The primary components include Infrared Source Module (IRSM), Collimator, Steering mirror, and Flood source. The IRSM is behind the Collimator in this photo and the Flood source is not installed on the CalGSE at this stage of the project. The IRSM generates spatial targets of various shapes and sizes for the collimator to project into the TIRS-2 sensor. The Steering mirror rotates in elevation and azimuth to adjust the position of the light beam for coverage of the full TIRS-2 field of view.Photo credit, Desiree Stovers.Figure 3: TIRS-2 On-board Blackbody (OBB) calibrator during final inspection by TIRS-2 Mechanical, Contamination, Material, Calibration, and Science teams. The TIRS-2 Deputy Instrument Scientist and Calibration Lead Joel McCorkel appears next to the OBB. Photo credit, Desiree Stovers.

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: The TIRS-2 instrument is a two-channel thermal imager that will provide global, geo-located thermal image data in the 10.8 um and 12 um spectral regions with 100-m sampling over 185-km swath. It will be one of the two primary instruments on Landsat 9 which will continue the legacy of the joint NASA-USGS Landsat Program providing Earth imagery since 1972. The TIRS-2 instrument leverages the design of Landsat 8 TIRS to provide similar measurements of the surface of the Earth with improved absolute accuracy and increased robustness and redundancy for a longer mission life. TIRS data are used by the science community to derive evapotranspiration products to evaluate water consumption on the field scale, assess droughts, and aide in water use management. These data are also used to track deforestation, assess volcanic eruptions and hazards, map urban heat fluxes, monitor and assess wildfires, track material transport in lakes and coastal regions, identify mosquito breading areas, and map power plant thermal plumes in waterways. TIRS-2 is designed, built, and managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The characterization and calibration of TIRS-2 is lead, planned, and executed by personnel in the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA GSFC.


Operational support to ocean color missionsB. Holben1, G. Zibordi 2, I. Slutsker1, D. Giles1, M. Sorokin1, T. Eck1 , A. Smirnov1, J. Schafer1

1 Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA GSFC, 2Joint Research Center

The Ocean Color Component of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET-OC) was conceived to supportthe validation of satellite ocean color data products such as normal water leaving radiance and aerosoloptical thickness through autonomous radiometric measurements performed from offshore platforms. Thenetwork, established in 2002 in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission,currently includes more than 20 globally distributed sites located in different marine regions. AERONET-OCdata are presently operationally applied by NASA to assess data products from a number of ocean colorsensors (e.g., the Ocean Land Color Imager (OLCI) onboard Sentinel-3, the Visible Infrared ImagingRadiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the NOAA-20 satellite and the Suomi National Polar-OrbitingPartnership (Suomi NPP) spacecraft). AERONET-OC Version 3 will be released later in 2018. It willimprove calibration, quality assurance and support new measurements over fresh water.

Fig. 1 Fig. 2


Name: Brent Holben, Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA GSFC E-mail: [email protected]: 301-614-6658

References:G.Zibordi, B.Holben, I.Slutsker, D.Giles, D.D’Alimonte, F.Mélin, J.-F. Berthon, D. Vandemark, H.Feng, G.Schuster, B.Fabbri, S.Kaitala, J.Seppälä.AERONET-OC: a network for the validation of Ocean Color primary radiometric products. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26,1634-1651, 2009.G.Zibordi, B.Holben, D.D’Alimonte, F.Mélin, J.-F. Berthon, I.Slutsker, D.Giles. AERONET-OC: An Overview. Canadian Journal of RemoteSensing, 36, 488–497, 2011.

Data Sources: VIIRS and AERONET-OC data from the AAOT site in the northern Adriatic Sea. Matchups (i.e., quasi-coincident satellite and insitu data) for the period October 2011 - December 2017 were constructed allowing a maximum time difference of +/- 1hr between in situmeasurements and satellite overpass.

Figure 1: AERONET-Ocean Color sites are located offshore at marine and fresh-water platforms

Figure 2: AERONET-Ocean Color data

Technical Description of Figures: Fig. 1 shows the geographical distribution of AERONET-OC sites (see https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/draw_map_display_seaprism_v3). The inset in Fig.1 displays the “Aqua Alta Oceanographic Tower (AAOT)” in the northern Adriatic Sea andthe two AERONET-OC units operated on it. This AERONET-OC site was the first established in the network and serves specific investigations onmeasurement protocols and uncertainty analysis. Fig.2 illustrates the performance of VIIRS !"#$%%&' data at different bands (i.e., those centered at410, 443, 486 and 551 nm) with respect to AERONET-OC !"#(&' reference values. Note that !"# expresses the water leaving-radiance !" thatwould occur with no atmosphere, the sun at the zenith and at the mean sun-earth distance. Units are in mW cm-2

µm-1 sr-1. Horizontal barsindicate the estimated uncertainties in AERONET-OC LWN data while vertical bars indicate ±1 standard deviation of the 3´3 VIIRS image elementscentered at the AAOT and utilized for computing the average VIIRS LWN applied for the comparison. N indicates the number of match-ups andrmsd the root-mean-square of differences.

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: The construction of Climate Data Records requires anumber of actions allowing the scientific community to merge multiple mission data into a single stream applicable for climate science. Amongthese actions, in situ reference data for the assessment of satellite data products are of fundamental importance. AERONET-OC is an effectiveinfrastructure supporting the continuous validation of satellite ocean color missions with real-time data. Uncertainty of these products is reducedwith the improved AERONET Version 3 processing for atmosphere, land and ocean color applications.


Improved Global Agricultural Monitoring Through the Integration of NASA SMAP Soil Moisture Observations into the

USDA-FAS Crop Forecasting SystemIliana E. Mladenova, John D. Bolten, and Nazmus Sazib, Hydrological Sciences Lab , NASA GSFC

The USDA-FAS Global Crop Decision Support System has been enhanced by the integration of NASA SMAP soil moisture observations. The efforts have led to the generation of improved soil moisture information that is essential for the agency’s

crop forecasting activities.

Severe Drought in the Western Cape Reduces South Africa's 2017/18 Wheat Output

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/2018/goddard/new-nasa-soil-moisture-data-spots-droughts-floods


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/2018/goddard/new-nasa-soil-moisture-data-spots-droughts-floods

Name: Iliana E. Mladenova, NASA/GSFC, Code 617E-mail: [email protected]: 301-614-6839

References: Bolten, John D., Wade T. Crow, Xiwu Zhan, Thomas J. Jackson, and Curt A. Reynolds. 2010. “Evaluating the Utility of Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture Retrievals for Operational Agricultural Drought Monitoring.” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 3 (1): 57–66.

Mladenova, I. E., J. D. Bolten, W. T. Crow, M. C. Anderson, C. R. Hain, D. M. Johnson, and R. Mueller. 2017. "Intercomparison of Soil Moisture, Evaporative Stress, and Vegetation Indices for Estimating Corn and Soybean Yields Over the U.S.." IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 10 (4): 1328-1343 [10.1109/jstars.2016.2639338]

Mladenova, I. E., J. D. Bolten, W. Crow, N. Sazib, M. Cosh, H. Tucker, and C. Reynolds, “Evaluating the Utility of SMAP’s Soil Moisture Observations for Agricultural Applications”, in preparation.

Data Sources: The soil moisture anomaly values are generated by the Soil Moisture Active Passive(SMAP)-enhanced U.S. Department of Agriculture–Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA-FAS) Palmer model. The model is driven by daily precipitation data and temperature observations provided by the U.S. Air Force 557th Weather Wing.

Technical Description of Figures: Figure: Shows the average sub-surface soil moisture anomalies over the southern portion of Africa for the 2016 and 2017 growing seasons,where negative values indicate that the soil moisture conditions are below average, while positive indicate surplus of water. The area has been experiencing decline in precipitation reaching record low rainfall amounts accompanied by high temperatures and evapotranspiration rates during the 2017 growing season. The South Africa 2017 drought caused about 29% decline in the region’s wheat yield production relative the previous year according to the USDA-FAS Crop Intelligence Report published on February 8th, 2018 (small insert located in the lower right part of the figure; https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/Default.aspx).

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: Amount of water in the root-zone depth of the soil profile is vital for proper crop growth and yield formation. Knowledge of the available water during the growing season is key for properly assessing the impact of within season weather variability, including the occurrence of agricultural drought on the end of season yield production. Therefore, systematic and accurate global soil moisture observations are essential for the USDA-FAS. USDA-FAS’s crop supply and demand estimates are of significant social importance, as they provide essential information on market demand and supply, and help to identify food insecure areas. The current agency’s crop growth and crop stress models are driven by soil moisture estimates generated by a simple hydrologic model. The model is highly susceptible to the quality of the precipitation data used to force the model. This study helps assess the utility of SMAP to improve the quality of the USDA-FAS soil moisture information and aid the USDA-FAS crop forecasting activities over poorly instrumented regions and areas with poor precipitation data quality.


http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/jstars.2016.2639338

https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/Default.aspx

Nano-scale Micromachined Doped Silicon Thermal Isolation

Structures for Thermal Land Imaging ApplicationsAlicia Joseph (Hydrological Sciences Lab), Emily Barrentine, Ari Brown and Carl Kotecki (Code 553)

NASA/GSFC

Pixel Size NETD [mK] Temperature t [ms]TIRS Instrument Requirement ~25 µm 330 - ≤ 5NASA/GSFC Doped-Si Thermopile (proposed) ~25 µm

420 300 K 5160 170 K 5

NASA/GSFC QWIPs ~25 µm 15 43 K < 5


To address the need for cost-effective land imaging missions that will not require cryocooler technology, we propose to develop novel uncooled doped-silicon thermopile detector arrays that offer superior performance in terms of sensitivity and time response, when compared to

uncooled commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) detector technology.

Name: Alicia Joseph, NASA/GSFC, Hydrological Sciences LaboratoryE-mail: [email protected]: 301-614-5804

References:Lakew, Brook, Emily M. Barrentine, Shahid Aslam, and Ari D. Brown. "Concept Doped-Silicon Thermopile Detectors for Future Planetary Thermal Imaging Instruments." In AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts, vol. 48. 2016.

Jhabvala, M., K. Choi, A. Waczynski, A. La, M. Sundaram, E. Costard, C. Jhabvala et al. "Performance of the QWIP focal plane arrays for NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission." In SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, pp. 80120Q-80120Q. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2011.

Data Sources: N/A

Technical Description of Figures:Graphic 1: Our proposed doped-Si thermopile design, an extension of a detector design originally developed at Goddard for planetary scienceapplications (Lakew et al. 2016), will exceed the performance of Commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) uncooled detectors. (Left) cartoon cross-sectionalview of a single pixel of our proposed array with reflective backshort to achieve high optical efficiency. (Right) First measurement of thermoelectricfigure of merit (which impacts detector performance) of submicron thick doped silicon samples of n-type dopant, fabricated and measured atNASA-Goddard. Here the thermoelectric figure of merit is defined as the S2/r, where S is the Seebeck coefficient (µV/K) and r is the electricalresistivity (Ohms*cm).

Table 1: Our design is optimized to meet TIRS requirements (Jhabvala et al. 2011). Table: Our proposed uncooled doped-Si thermopile design (green) will be able to nearly meet or exceed present thermal imaging instrument requirements, like TIRS. Though cooled QWIPs offer superior detector performance, the TIRS instrument is limited in sensitivity by other instrument noise sources above the QWIPs detector noise level. For NETD estimates we have assumed the TIRS instrument design with a 10.5 - 11.5 µm band, 90 Hz, f/1.64 optics, observing a 300 K blackbody.

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: The National Research Council’s Committee onImplementation of a Sustained Land Imaging Program has identified the inclusion of a thermal imager as critical for both current and future landimaging missions. Such an imaging instrument operating in two bands located at approximately 11 and 12 microns (for example, in Landsat 8, andalso Landsat 9 when launched) will provide essential information for furthering our hydrologic understanding at scales of human influence, andproduce field-scale moisture information through accurate retrievals of evapotranspiration (ET). Landsat 9 is slated to recycle the TIRS-2instrument launched with Landsat 8 that uses cooled quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) operating at ~43-65 K temperature, hencerequiring expensive and massive cryocooler technology to achieve its required spectral and spatial accuracies. In contrast, we aim to develop athermal imaging instrument which leverages recent technology advances in uncooled detectors. Such detector technology will offer the benefit ofgreatly reduced instrument cost, mass, and power at the expense of some acceptable loss in detector sensitivity. It would also allow a thermalimaging instrument to be fielded on board a low-cost platform, e.g., a CubeSat. In addition, it would enable capitalizing on the greater number oflaunch opportunities available for launch vehicles like the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA).


Remote sensing of aerosols with small satellites in formation flight Kirk Knobelspiesse1 and Sreeja Nag2,3

1Ocean Ecology Lab., NASA GSFC, 2Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, 3NASA Ames Research Center

Using a coupled systems engineering model and information content analysis, we found that both configurations are equally capable. Thus, constellations of small satellites may be an alternative to the paradigm of multi-angle observations from a single instrument.

Multi angle instrument such as MISR, POLDER or (planned) HARP, MAIA

Multiple, single view satellites in formation flight, targeting the same location

Which is better for aerosol remote sensing?

Figure 1 Figure 2

Figure 3


Name: Kirk Knobelspiesse, Ocean Ecology Lab, NASA GSFCE-mail: [email protected]: 301.614.6242

References:Knobelspiesse, K. and Nag, S.: Remote sensing of aerosols with small satellites in formation flight, Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2017-473, in press, 2018.

Data Sources: The first author was supported in this research by an award from the NASA New (Early Career) Investigator Program in Earth Science, NNH13ZDA001N-NIP, managed by Ming-Ying Wei and Lin Chambers. The research was conducted at both the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The doubling and adding radiative transfer code used in this work was developed at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, with recent updates by Brian Cairns and Jacek Chowdhary at that institution.

Technical Description of Figures:Figures 1 and 2: We test the difference, in terms of information available to the retrieval of aerosol properties, of traditional multi-angle, single satellite instruments (1) vs. constellations of multiple, single view satellites (2). Recent technological developments in cube- and small- satellite technology mean that the latter are becoming increasingly feasible. The primary difference that we test is the geometric distribution of the observations, either restricted to a plane as in (1) or dispersed as in (2). Using a systems engineering model, coupled with a retrieval information content analysis (3), we find no relevant difference between the two.

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: Our preliminary analysis indicates that constellations of satellites can be considered as an alternative to traditional single view platforms, and motivates a deeper investigation of such systems.


mailto:[email protected]

Probing the Accuracy of Earth Orientation Parameters from VLBIDirk Behrend, John Gipson, Ed Himwich, Dan MacMillan, Cynthia Thomas

Geodesy and Geophysics Lab, NASA GSFCNVI, Inc., Greenbelt, MD

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is a space-geodetic technique that makes use of radio telescopes todetermine the Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) of precession & nutation, Earth rotation (UT1), and polarmotion. The full set of EOP allows the transition between the terrestrial and the celestial reference frames. AsUT1 and nutation are uniquely determined by VLBI, no independent technique can assist in estimating theaccuracy of these parameters. To probe the accuracy of the EOP and to determine possible network biases, acontinuous observing campaign called CONT17 was organized using three independent VLBI networkssimultaneously during the period November 28 to December 12, 2017. The current dual-band S/X VLBIsystem was used on two global networks for the entire 15-day period, while the next-generation VGOS (VLBIGlobal Observing System) broadband system (four bands) was used for 5 days on a limited network.


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Name: Dirk Behrend, Geodesy and Geophysics Lab, NASA GSFC and NVI, Inc.E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 301-614-5939

ReferencesBehrend, D., C. Thomas, J. Gipson, and E. Himwich (2018), Organizing the Continuous VLBI Campaign 2017 (CONT17), 10th IVS General Meeting, Longyearbyen, Norway, June 3-8, 2018.Behrend, D., C. Thomas, J. Gipson, and E. Himwich (2017), Planning of the Continuous VLBI Campaign 2017 (CONT17), Proc. 23rd

European VLBI Group for Geodesy and Astrometry Working Meeting, ed. By R. Haas and G. Elgered, Gothenburg, Sweden, ISBN 978-91-88041-10-4, pp. 132-135., https://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/program/cont17/

Data Sources: The data of the CONT17 campaign will be made available through the data holdings of the IVS data centers. Until the end of 2018 full access is limited to the participants of CONT17 only. From 2019 onward the data will be openly available to all users. The NASA Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) is one of the IVS data centers.

Technical Description of Figures:Graphics: Shown are differences (black dots) in estimates of UT1 and X-Pole from two legacy CONT17 S/X networks together with the 1-σformal errors (dotted lines) of the difference. X-Pole and UT1 biases over the 15 days were 1.4 µasec and 0.6 µsec. These results give initial confirmation of the accuracy of Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) estimates from VLBI. EOP measurements are embedded in all aspects of satellite precise orbit determination and geolocation of satellite observations, as well as in precise positioning on the ground using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data. In addition EOP measurements supply us information about the geophysics of the Earth.

The network plots show the three VLBI networks that observed simultaneously during the CONT17 campaign from November 28 to December 12, 2017. The two legacy S/X networks consisted of 14 stations each. It was possible to have these two independent global networks for the first time, because the ten Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA) astronomy antennas of the Long Baseline Observatory (LBO) could be used in addition to the regular geodetic IVS (International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry) stations. The VLBA+ network is depicted in red in the plot. The VGOS broadband network was more limited in scope (observing period and geographic distribution) with only six stations (in green) and served mostly demonstration purposes (yellow stations were planned but did not observe).

Scientific significance, societal relevance, and relationships to future missions: CONT17 was the first three-network continuous VLBI campaign. CONT17 is likely to be the largest legacy S/X continuous R&D effort as stations are converting to the future VGOS mode. The VGOS will become the VLBI contribution to the determination of the terrestrial reference frame in combination with the other techniques of space geodesy, Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), GNSS, and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS). An accurate and stable reference frame is needed for monitoring global sea level change. VLBI is unique in the capability to determine UT1 and nutation. Comparison of EOP parameters derived from the three independent VLBI networks will allow the precision and accuracy of these parameters to be evaluated, and gives us a first idea of the performance of the next generation VLBI systems.


Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 Characterization

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