Open Access Paper
20 November 2017 The EarthCARE multi spectral imager thermal infrared optical unit
Author Affiliations +
Proceedings Volume 10565, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2010; 105651T (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2309143
Event: International Conference on Space Optics—ICSO 2010, 2010, Rhodes Island, Greece
Abstract
The EarthCARE satellite mission objective is the observation of clouds and aerosols from low Earth orbit. The key spatial context providing instrument within the payload suite of 4 instruments is the Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI), previously described in [1]. The MSI is intended to provide information on the horizontal variability of the atmospheric conditions and to identify e.g. cloud type, textures, and temperature. It will form Earth images at 500m ground sample distance (GSD) over a swath width of 150km; it will image Earth in 7 spectral bands: one visible, one near-IR, two short-wave IR and three thermal IR. The instrument will be comprised of two key parts:

• a visible-NIR-SWIR (VNS) optical unit radiometrically calibrated using a sun illuminated quasivolume diffuser and shutter system

• a thermal IR (TIR) optical unit radiometrically calibrated using cold space and an internal black-body. This paper, being the first of a sequence of two, will provide an overview of the MSI and enter into more detail the critical performance parameters and detailed design the MSI TIR optical design.

The TIR concept is to provide pushbroom imaging of its 3 bands through spectral separation from a common aperture. The result is an efficient, well controlled optical design without the need for multiple focal plane arrays. The designed focal plane houses an area array detector and will meet a challenging set of requirements, including radiometric resolution, accuracy, distortion and MTF.
© (2017) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
M. P. J. L. Chang, D. Woods, Guy Baister, Dan Lobb, and Trevor Wood "The EarthCARE multi spectral imager thermal infrared optical unit", Proc. SPIE 10565, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2010, 105651T (20 November 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2309143
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KEYWORDS
Modulation transfer functions

Sensors

Mirrors

Thermography

Black bodies

Calibration

Multispectral imaging

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