Calibration of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

Physics

Scientific paper

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5494 Instruments And Techniques, 6250 Moon (1221), 6297 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) onboard the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft consists of three cameras: the Wide-Angle Camera (WAC) and two identical Narrow Angle Cameras (NAC-L, NAC-R). The WAC is push-frame imager with 5 visible wavelength filters (415 to 680 nm) at a spatial resolution of 100 m/pixel and 2 UV filters (315 and 360 nm) with a resolution of 400 m/pixel. In addition to the multicolor imaging the WAC can operate in monochrome mode to provide a global large- incidence angle basemap and a time-lapse movie of the illumination conditions at both poles. The WAC has a highly linear response, a read noise of 72 e- and a full well capacity of 47,200 e-. The signal-to-noise ratio in each band is 140 in the worst case. There are no out-of-band leaks and the spectral response of each filter is well characterized. Each NAC is a monochrome pushbroom scanner, providing images with a resolution of 50 cm/pixel from a 50-km orbit. A single NAC image has a swath width of 2.5 km and a length of up to 26 km. The NACs are mounted to acquire side-by-side imaging for a combined swath width of 5 km. The NAC is designed to fully characterize future human and robotic landing sites in terms of topography and hazard risks. The North and South poles will be mapped on a 1-meter-scale poleward of 85.5° latitude. Stereo coverage can be provided by pointing the NACs off-nadir. The NACs are also highly linear. Read noise is 71 e- for NAC-L and 74 e- for NAC-R and the full well capacity is 248,500 e- for NAC-L and 262,500 e- for NAC- R. The focal lengths are 699.6 mm for NAC-L and 701.6 mm for NAC-R; the system MTF is 28% for NAC-L and 26% for NAC-R. The signal-to-noise ratio is at least 46 (terminator scene) and can be higher than 200 (high sun scene). Both NACs exhibit a straylight feature, which is caused by out-of-field sources and is of a magnitude of 1-3%. However, as this feature is well understood it can be greatly reduced during ground processing. All three cameras were calibrated in the laboratory under ambient conditions. Future thermal vacuum tests will characterize critical behaviors across the full range of lunar operating temperatures. In-flight tests will check for changes in response after launch and provide key data for meeting the requirements of 1% relative and 10% absolute radiometric calibration.

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