Status of Pre-launch Activities for the Joint Polar Satellite System Calibration/Validation Program for the NPOESS Preparatory Project

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) JPSS Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) team is currently executing pre-launch activities in preparation for efficient integration of the Sensor Data Records (SDRs) and Environmental Data Records (EDRs) into Customer applications to reduce risk in achieving NOAA Mission Success. The JPSS Validation Team, led by the JPSS Program Science Office, includes algorithm developers and subject matter experts from the Customer and User communities, bringing together the expertise with the production algorithms, product use, and science community.

The Collaborative Cal/Val Program has two main objectives. The first is to provide risk reduction for the JPSS mission of providing environmental observations to meet civilian and military requirements/missions. The program will provide the JPSS Customers with operationally viable, validated, useful data products and provide investigations into product defects and inconsistencies of specific impact to customers. The second objective is to facilitate the fullest possible exploitation of the unique data provided from NPP/JPSS by the science, commerce, climate, and academic communities. The Cal/Val Program will provide general JPSS Program information to all users about the data products, sensors, and algorithms, as well as provide technical support to the broad research and development community in their assessment and exploitation of JPSS data. In addition, the Cal/Val Program will support the NOAA and NASA climate initiatives by sharing data, software tools, and information as needed.

This presentation will highlight the progress made in the past year in characterizing the as-built NPP instruments, assessing performance of the data products, and defining the post-launch activity schedule, techniques and correlative data that is used.