AirMISR laboratory calibration and in-flight performance results

An airborne Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (AirMISR) instrument has been developed to assist in validation of the Earth Observing System (EOS) MISR experiment. The airborne instrument is built to the same performance specifications as MISR. Both instruments view the earth at nine discrete view angles, provide data products that are radiance scaled to Système International (SI) units, registered among the view angles, and geolocated. Whereas on-orbit MISR will acquire a global data set every 9 days, the aircraft version is restricted to a target size of 9×11 km per aircraft run. AirMISR does, however, have the advantages of offering a means to testbed new mission procedures or camera designs, provide data sets that predate the MISR launch, and a means of returning to the laboratory to update the camera calibrations. This paper provides the AirMISR laboratory calibration results.