Pre-flight satellite instrumentation calibration

Spectroscopically Tuneable Absolute Radiometric, calibration and characterisation, Optical Ground Support Equipment (STAR-cc-OGSE) has been developed in partnership with the innovative company, M Squared.  The STAR facility provides a state-of-the-art solution to instrument calibration and characterisation, ensuring the required performance is achieved while also minimising the time and effort involved in the pre-launch vacuum test environment.

The STAR facility is designed to meet the demanding needs of climate and environmental monitoring, and its flexibility, comprehensiveness and ease of use makes it suitable for a wide range of applications.  It can enhance the performance of missions previously thought to be impossible due to cost and complexity, by providing end to end calibration and characterisation, and also be used by the cube-sats of new space providers. STAR-cc-OGSE is fully traceable to NPL’s primary radiometric standard, the cryogenic radiometer, and can provide unprecedented uncertainties well below 0.5% across a wide spectral range.

MicroCarb is the first mission that will utilise STAR-cc-OGSE. It is a joint mission between UKSA and CNES which will measure sources and sinks of carbon, the principal greenhouse gas driving global warming. Better knowledge of the flow of CO₂ is needed to understand the annual cycle of vegetation and its response to meteorological anomalies. It is also important that terrestrial ecosystem carbon sinks and sources can be identified and quantified, as well as building an understanding of how they change because of climate variation. The mission will also measure the links between carbon emissions and fossil fuel use.  As the UK’s National Metrology Institute, NPL is underpinning the measurements provided by MicroCarb, providing traceability and confidence in the outputs of the mission.  

^{NPL assisted in the production of this Space4Climate film}