General on Orbit Sensor Evaluation (GOOSE) Testbed

Weather domain awareness is of primary importance for military tactical and surveillance domains. The Aerospace Corporation assists the U.S. Space Force in acquisition of new space-based weather sensors, including sensor calibration and validation of sensor data and products. To this end, we have developed a testbed called General On Orbit Sensor Evaluation (GOOSE) for rapid evaluation of sensor performance across a variety of metrics. The testbed verifies calibration of sensor data records (SDRs) using statistical comparisons of measured radiance from the new sensor with several common sources, including existing geostationary operational weather sensors, polar orbing weather satellites during simultaneous nadir overpass, and pseudo-invariant sites such as the Libyan desert and the Antarctic ice sheet. The testbed also assesses performance of environmental data records (EDRs) to verify that SDRs are of sufficient quality to meet EDR performance requirements. Currently, GOOSE incorporates the Clouds from AVHRR Extended (CLAVR-x) algorithms to produce cloud products (cloud mask, cloud type, cloud temperature, etc.) and compares them with cloud products from NOAA’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The tools that make up the testbed are integrated in a modern digital engineering framework, with software components containerized and accessible in a cloud computing environment through a web app interface. Use of the testbed is demonstrated on recently launched Space Force satellite weather sensors.