Radiometric calibration of Landsat

The radiometric calibration of the sensors on the Landsat series of satellites is a contributing factor to the success of the Landsat data set. The calibration of these sensors has relied on the preflight laboratory work as well as on inflight techniques using on-board calibrators and vicarious techniques. Descriptions of these methods and systems are presented. Results of the on-board calibrators and reflectance-based, ground reference calibrations of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper are presented that indicate the absolute radiometric calibration of bands 1 to 4 should have an uncertainty of less than 5.0 percent. Bands 5 and 7 have slightly higher uncertainties, but should be less than 10 percent. The results also show that the on-board calibrators are of higher precision than the vicarious calibration but that the vicarious calibration results should have higher accuracy.