EO-1 Advanced Land Imager stray light analysis and impact on flight data

The EO-1 Advanced Land Imager (ALI) was developed under NASA´s New Millennium Program. The ALI is validating new technologies and measurement techniques for application to future wide field-of-view, non-cryogenically cooled, pushbroom Earth observing systems. Extensive pre flight measurements of the BRDF for the optical elements were made. These data were used in a system level analysis to assess the impact of stray light on flight observations. A model was developed to estimate the error in measured scene radiance as a function of the ratio of scene radiance to background radiance. This effect can be significant for scenes with high contrast. A quantification of the ALI stray light characteristics based on preflight measurements and flight observations will be presented. The impact of stray light on the radiometric accuracy of in-flight data will be compared to the model.