In November 2024, ESA at its Estec facility in Noordwijk the Netherlands, hosted a joint CEOS GSICS workshop on pre-flight calibration of passive optical satellite sensors, spectrometers and multi-band. The workshop, which was primarily in person, attracted 220 registrants from around the globe from both CEOS/GSICS agencies and commercial satellite developers. The meeting was organised by a CEOS/GSICS management team and a 30-member science committee comprising of agency, industry and academic experts from across the globe.
Over the four-day meeting, three primarily for solar reflective sensors and one for Thermal IR, there were 25 oral presentations and 24 posters, structured into thematic sessions and most importantly 8 facilitated discussion sessions. These very active discussions considered technical challenges and solutions, lessons learnt and, in some cases, new facilities and capabilities.
One of the major successes of the workshop was the openness of the participants and their willingness to share ideas, problems and a desire for common guidance and good practises. The ultimate goal of the workshop, strongly encouraged by the participants, is to draft a CEOS/GSICS guide on what characterisation/calibration should be done as a minimum for sensor type and application together with methodology options on how to achieve it.
Amongst the recommendations/conclusions of the meeting was:
- The encouragement for more transparency of calibration/characterisation methods and results from both agency-led missions and those of the commercial sector.
- That more time needed to be reserved for Calibration, at the end of a development schedule this was often the element that was squeezed and can seriously impact the resultant mission performance.
- Seek to test beyond the nominal mission operational conditions, where possible.
- Good practise guidance on what calibration and characterisation should be done and whether it needs to be done under thermal vacuum specified for specific classes/applications of missions should be written, readily accessible and updated.
- Detectors often still have many surprises!
- Consider the Cal/Val needs from the design phase of a mission
- Pre-flight characterise to ensure maximal benefit can be obtained from post-launch Cal/Val, particularly in preparation for the new era of SITSats but also accounting for the utility of the moon.
Participants to the Pre-Flight Calibration Workshop
The presentations of the workshop are being accumulated and can be found here: Pre-Flight Calibration Workshop. A working group to define the good practises is being formed and Interested experts from all communities are welcome to join this group and do not need to have attended the workshop. They should contact nigel.fox@npl.co.uk or Xiaoxiong.Xiong@Nasa.gov who are co-chairs of the science committee responsible for its drafting.
The participants were keen to have a continued regular series of similar events, not only updates of this one but also targeting other sensor domains such as active optical and microwave etc.
The CEOS Working Group on Calibration & Validation(WGCV)
