Many earth-observing missions, with sensors covering spectral regions from ultraviolet to microwaves, have been developed and utilized over the years for studies of changes in the Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, and their interactions. These missions include the U.S. NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) missions, such as Terra, Aqua, and Aura missions, the TEMPO mission, the PACE mission, the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) mission, the Landsat 8 and 9 missions, the NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, including JPSS-1 and -2, GOES-16, -17 and -18 missions, the ESA's MetOp and Sentinel series, the EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation: Imaging mission (MTG-I), the JAXA's Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite-2 (GOSAT-2), GCOM-W and -C, the Advanced Land Observation Satellite-2 (ALOS-2), and the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission, the JMA’s Himawari-8 and -9 missions, the China's FY and HY satellite series, the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite series, and the South Korean Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) and GEO-KOMPSAT-2 missions. Successful development and operations of these missions and their applications have significantly contributed to the advances of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which is being built as a public infrastructure interconnecting a diverse and growing array of instruments and systems for monitoring and forecasting changes in the global environment. Meanwhile, with technology advancements and design improvements, various follow-on and new missions are currently underway throughout the world, such as the U.S. JPSS follow-on missions, the Landsat follow-on missions, the Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) missions, the ESA's Sentinels and Earth Explorer missions, the EUMETSAT Polar System – Second Generation (EPS-SG) missions, the JAXA's GOSAT-GW and ALOS-4 missions, the joint ESA/JAXA EarthCARE mission, the Multi−footprint Observation Lidar and Imager (MOLI) mission, and the next generation of China's FY and HY satellite series. In addition to traditional research and operational missions, many efforts and advances have been continuously made for the development and operation of commercial and low-cost CubeSat and small satellites, the sub-orbital missions, including those housed by the International Space Station (ISS). As more and more satellite observations and data products are made available to the science and user community, it has become increasingly important and demanding to achieve high quality calibration and characterization of individual sensors, from pre-launch to post-launch, and accurate determination of their calibration traceability and consistency, especially for developing and extending satellite long-term data records. The establishment and extensive use of the CEOS reference calibration/validation sites and targets, including regularly scheduled lunar observations, and the efforts and progress made by the WMO Global Space-based Inter-calibration System (GSICS) and CEOS Calibration and Validation Working Group (WGCV) are such examples.
This conference welcomes papers to be submitted overall a wide range of topics related to the Earth remote sensing missions and sensors, their development, implementation, and characterization, and especially on the following and related topics:
- existing missions and sensors, including their operation status, performance, and lessons learned
- new research, operational, and commercial missions and sensors, small satellites, including their mission studies, design and calibration requirements, test concept, and system implementation
- sensor pre-launch calibration and characterization methodologies and results
- sensor post-launch calibration and characterization methodologies and results
- small satellite calibration approaches and techniques
- sensor performance validation and vicarious calibration
- calibration inter-comparison and assessment of calibration consistency among sensors
- sensor calibration accuracy, uncertainty, and traceability
- enabling technologies (e.g. optics, electronics, and detectors) for sensor system development and innovative equipment or techniques for sensor radiometric, spectral, spatial, and polarization testing
- improved test data analysis methodologies and techniques