Aqua MODIS Band 24 Crosstalk Striping

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite, unlike its predecessor Terra MODIS, had always been thought to have been spared from significant deleterious impacts of electronic crosstalk on its imagery. However, recent efforts brought to our attention the presence of striping artifacts in Aqua MODIS images from band 24 (4.47 μm), which upon further inspection proved to have a noticeable impact on the quality of the L1B product and to have been present since the beginning of the mission, in 2002. Using images of the moon from scheduled lunar observations, we linked the artifacts with electronic crosstalk contamination of the response of detector 1 of band 24 by signal sent from the detector 10 of band 26 (1.375 μm), a neighboring band in the same focal plane assembly. In this letter, we report on these findings, the artifact mitigation strategy adopted by us, and on our success in restoring band 24 detector 1 behavior and image quality.