Over the next five years there will be substantial changes in moderate resolution earth remote sensing. This will be driven primarily by the U.S. Approaching earth observation as an operational…

This $1,124,355 cooperative agreement was awarded by the Shared Services Center, a civilian federal agency, to South Dakota State University (SDSU) on July 1, 2015 for the "Radiometric Calibration Advances for Next Generation Pushbroom Sensors" program. The contract supports SDSU's Image Processing Laboratory in advancing the state-of-the-art in radiometric calibration for the Landsat 8, Landsat 9, and Sentinel-2 Earth remote sensing satellite missions over the next five years. The work aims to optimize the design, operation, and continuous validation of calibration systems for these next-generation moderate resolution optical sensors. This contract does not have a set-aside designation, as SDSU is a public land-grant university. SDSU's parent organization is the State of South Dakota Board of Regents, which has also received federal grants from the National Science Foundation to support STEM research and education initiatives across the state.

Over the next five years there will be substantial changes in moderate resolution earth remote sensing. This will be driven primarily by the U.S. Approaching earth observation as an operational program within the partnership between NASA and USGS, and by the imminent european launch of the SENTINEL2 mission which will directly complement the landsat mission. Together, these two systems will provide a precision, science grade earth imaging capability that significantly exceeds what has previously been available. To take full advantage of this major step forward, IT is essential that these systems be calibrated as accurately and precisely as possible. We propose two key steps that will contribute significantly towards achieving this goal. The sdsu image processing laboratory, founded in 1990, has worked extensively in the field of radiometric calibration of earth imaging satellites for three decades and has developed an exhaustive capability in the area of post-launch radiometric calibration. We propose to use this historical knowledge base for further advancing the state of the art in calibration for the landsat program, with a concentration on landsats 8 and 9, and on the SENTINEL2 program. Our value in this effort comes from providing both a primary means for vicarious based calibration, and accurate backup methods when on board systems fail. So that both types of systems are used to their maximum potential with these future missions, we propose to be well connected to NASA instrument development, both pre and post launch, to ensure optimal design, operation and continuous validation of calibration systems. Through close interactions with both colleagues at gsfc, and industrial instrument developers, our group will be able to better understand instrument operations and performance and optimize post launch calibration capabilities of future landsat instruments. In this proposal we are emphasizing a systemic approach to optical satellite sensor calibration. In that sense, the work is not only applicable to the next generation of landsat, but also has application to the SENTINEL2 sensors. In fact, vicarious absolute calibration methodologies developed by our group will be accomplished such that they are applicable to nearly all optical sensors in the visible and infrared at moderate and high spatial resolutions. Thus, the worked proposed can be used to support independent calibration of SENTINEL2 and optimal cross calibration of SENTINEL2 with landsat 8 and 9. The next section of this proposal gives a brief overview of the IP labs accomplishments in radiometric calibration. Following that is a statement of proposed work for the next five years for advanced calibration for landsat and SENTINEL2 that is directly applicable to nasas sustained land imaging program. The proposal concludes with a budget, budget justification, and CVS of the IP lab staff members.