In-flight radiometric calibration of ASTER by reference to well-characterized scenes

ASTER will be calibrated in the laboratory by reference to sources traceable to NRLM and NIST standards and through the use of transfer radiometers. Partial aperture on-board calibration systems will be used in the solar-reflective range and an on-board blackbody source will be used in the infrared. An important independent source of calibration data will be provided through the in-flight radiometric calibration of ASTER by reference to well- characterized scenes. The latter is the subject of this paper. Methods that make use of ground reflectance and radiance measurements made simultaneously with atmospheric measurements at selected sites and used as input to radiative transfer codes are described. The results of error analyses are presented indicating that, depending on the method used, the predicted uncertainties fall between ± 2.8% and ± 4.9%, for the solar-reflective range. In the thermal infrared, the goal is an uncertainty of less than 1 K. A method that provides in-flight cross calibrations with other sensors also is described.