Monday, 13 January 2025: 9:30 AM
232 (New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
Since selection in 2016, the OU/NASA-led GeoCarb Mission has navigated successfully through numerous
challenges towards building the first ever geostationary greenhouse gas observatory. The mission was
cancelled in November 2022. Through the hard work of the teams at Lockheed Martin, OU, and CSU,
GeoCarb was delivered to NASA in November 2023 including a completely integrated instrument,
electronics, and software and a limited Engineering Performance Test (EPT) in T-Vac with to assess
instrument performance. These data included solar downwelling atmospheric spectra via a heliostat with a
co-located EM27/Sun FTIR.
The analysis of the EPT data was begun in December of 2023 and has continued to show that GeoCarb
shows the potential to deliver a step change in our understanding of the carbon cycle in the midlatitudes and
tropics of the Western Hemisphere. Some challenges remain: stray light, image keystone, detector residual
image, and the effects of nonuniform scene illumination within a spatial footprint. We believe the first three
can be solved with sufficient calibration data and mature algorithms. The last has been shown to be
significantly mitigated by modification of the retrieval algorithms.
In this presentation, we provide an update on the status of the GeoCarb instrument and mission. We will
describe the expected performance in detail as a result of Observing System Simulation Experiments
(OSSEs) that take the expected performance of GeoCarb into account, including SNR, spectral and spatial
resolution, and radiometric performance. We will demonstrate that the daily revisit cycle provides a
powerful constraint on the carbon cycle across the GeoCarb field of view.
The scientific case for GeoCarb is strong. The technology of the GeoCarb instrument is capable of meeting
the requirements specified by this scientific case. These findings along with other developments in the
challenge of getting to space will demonstrate that GeoCarb will become the next “Phoenix Mission.”
challenges towards building the first ever geostationary greenhouse gas observatory. The mission was
cancelled in November 2022. Through the hard work of the teams at Lockheed Martin, OU, and CSU,
GeoCarb was delivered to NASA in November 2023 including a completely integrated instrument,
electronics, and software and a limited Engineering Performance Test (EPT) in T-Vac with to assess
instrument performance. These data included solar downwelling atmospheric spectra via a heliostat with a
co-located EM27/Sun FTIR.
The analysis of the EPT data was begun in December of 2023 and has continued to show that GeoCarb
shows the potential to deliver a step change in our understanding of the carbon cycle in the midlatitudes and
tropics of the Western Hemisphere. Some challenges remain: stray light, image keystone, detector residual
image, and the effects of nonuniform scene illumination within a spatial footprint. We believe the first three
can be solved with sufficient calibration data and mature algorithms. The last has been shown to be
significantly mitigated by modification of the retrieval algorithms.
In this presentation, we provide an update on the status of the GeoCarb instrument and mission. We will
describe the expected performance in detail as a result of Observing System Simulation Experiments
(OSSEs) that take the expected performance of GeoCarb into account, including SNR, spectral and spatial
resolution, and radiometric performance. We will demonstrate that the daily revisit cycle provides a
powerful constraint on the carbon cycle across the GeoCarb field of view.
The scientific case for GeoCarb is strong. The technology of the GeoCarb instrument is capable of meeting
the requirements specified by this scientific case. These findings along with other developments in the
challenge of getting to space will demonstrate that GeoCarb will become the next “Phoenix Mission.”
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