Thermal calibration of MISI

MISI (Modular Imaging Spectrometer Instrument) is a sensor that takes data of the earth in the visible, near infrared and long wave infrared portions of the spectrum. One use of MISI is as an under-flight sensor that evaluates the accuracy of the thermal channels of NASA’s Landsat 7 ETM+. The hypothesis of this research stated it was possible to calibrate MISI to 0.3 K. To confirm this hypothesis, a procedure that verifies that the blackbodies track temperature correctly was employed. This specific calibration error is required in order to validate Landsat’s accuracy to 0.5 K. To observe the temperature of the blackbodies, a working field calibration procedure was constructed. The goal is to have trust in MISI’s blackbodies without extra thermistor help. Thermistors currently exist in MISI, but without total trust, extra thermistors were added for verification. The field calibration procedure was based on an in-scanner calibration method used to address MISI as a system. This method used known water bath targets to figure out the temperatures of the MISI blackbodies. After utilizing this method, it was concluded the extra thermistors were vital to the procedure. This dependence is due to the emissivity of water. Therefore, I recommend that the extra thermistors be used directly, which meets the required calibration error. The results yield RMS errors of 0.3 K and 0.1 K in the blackbody temperatures