Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The MODIS Protoflight Model, launched on-board the NASA EOS Terra spacecraft on 18 December 1999, has been in operation for more than two years, providing the science community with calibrated data sets for global studies of the Earth's land, oceans and atmosphere. MODIS has 36 spectral bands, covering the spectral range from 412 nm to 14 200 nm, and provides spatial resolutions of 0.25 km (two bands), 0.5 km (five bands) and 1 km (29 bands) at nadir. The key on-board calibrators (OBCs) include a solar diffuser (SD) and a solar diffuser stability monitor (SDSM) system for calibration of the reflective solar bands, and a V-grooved flat-panel blackbody (BB) for calibration of the thermal emissive bands. In this paper, we describe the use of OBCs for the sensor's radiometric calibration and characterization and discuss on-orbit performance. In addition, we provide an assessment of the on-orbit degradation of the SD and MODIS optics.
Xiong et al. (Sat,) studied this question.