The German Research Center for Geosciences also known as GFZ-Potsdam has a long history in the definition and development of new spaceborne sensors such as for gravity and optical Earth Observation missions with GRACE, GRACE-FO, MOMS, and very recently with the launch of EnMAP on 1st April 2022. The Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) is the first German spaceborne hyperspectral satellite mission. EnMAP aims at monitoring and characterizing the Earth’s environment on a global scale. Core science objectives are toward studying environmental changes, ecosystem responses to human activities, and management of natural resources. The EnMAP mission consortium is composed of the DLR Space Administration in Bonn that is responsible for the overall project management, OHB is responsible of the space segment, DLR Earth Observation Center is responsible of the ground segment, and GFZ Potsdam is responsible for the science related activities and science mission support. In particular, EnMAP is accompanied by an extensive scientific exploitation preparation program that has been run for more than a decade to support industrial and mission development, and scientific exploitation of the data by the user community. In the current EnMAP phase, this program includes mission support during the current commissioning phase and the start of the nominal phase planned toward end of October, supported by the EnMAP Science Advisory Group. In that frame, large activities in the GFZ remote sensing group are dedicated to a) hyperspectral sensor simulation, data quality and validation of EnMAP data products, b) development of methods and open softwares toolboxes such as in the QGIS EnMAP-Box for the pre-processing of radiance to reflectance, and for the retrieval of geo- and bio-physical parameters, c) user community training and workshops, development of new educational resources such as in the EnMAP online learning initiative HYPERedu, opening of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the basics of imaging spectroscopy, d) mission support and development of validation and background mission plan, and EnMAP announcement of opportunities.

This presentation will give a general introduction to the space debris problem, current state of the environment and currently defined mitigation measures. It will then concentrate on the space debris-related aspects of ESA’s ambitous Space Safety programme and provide details on ESA’s plans to develop sensor technology for debris monitoring in the area of laser, ground- and space-based optical telescopes and radar. In addition to this, the presentation will also address current technology developments towards collision avoidance, space-traffic management and onboard technology to improve European compliance with such requirements in an economically viable way. Finally, the presentation will address the first ever active debris removal mission as an enabler of European industrial capability to conduct in-orbit servicing.

The Athena/Epic sensorcraft jointly developed with NASA Langley Research Center will demonstrate a transformation in the measurement of the Fundamental Climate Data Record to understand the Earth's energy budget— a key gauge of climate health. Utilizing residual flight hardware from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments, NASA Langley completed the design, development and test of an aggregated sensor called Athena which will measure the Top of Atmosphere Outgoing Longwave Radiation. This architecture readily incorporates future technology advances, significantly reduces full lifecycle costs, and forms the basis of demonstrating emerging technologies for measuring the Earth’s radiation fields.

ESA is preparing an ambitious Earth Observation programme addressing a large range of applications and Earth science issues. The Earth Explorer missions are pivotal to FutureEO programme. Phase A studies are being concluded for the Earth Explorer 10 mission, HARMONY, and Phase 0 studies have also been initiated for four Earth Explorer 11 candidate missions, WIVERN, CAIRT, SEASTAR, and NITROSAT. The FutureEO Programme is also including an opportunity mission, to be developed in cooperation with NASA in the framework of MAGIC, the Next Generation Gravity Mission. Earth Explorers provide also sound heritage for developing future operational missions. An example is based on the recent success of wind lidar mission Aeolus, and ESA is running preparatory activities for the development of the Aeolus 2 mission, in view of future wind lidar mission to be operated by EUMETSAT. In the frame of the next generation of the Copernicus Sentinel missions, ESA is conducting phase A studies for Sentinel1-NG, Sentinel 3 Topographic and phase 0 studies for Sentinel 2 and 3 NG.

Currently, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and Japan Space Systems (JSS) are operating major Earth Observation Satellites. Ibuki (GOSAT) carrying TANSO-CAI and -FTS, GOSAT-2 carrying TANSO-CAI2 and -FTS2, Shizuku (GCOM-W) carrying AMSR2, Daichi-2 (ALOS-2) carrying PALSAR-2 + CIRC, DPR on GPM-core satellite of NASA, and Shikisai (GCOM-C) carrying SGLI, are being operated by JAXA under cooperation with some domestic agencies, such as Ministry of Environment (MoE), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). JMA is operating meteorological satellite Himawari-8 and -9 on geostationary orbit. Next generation of meteorological satellite is entering study by JMA. JSS is operating ASTER on EOS-Terra satellite of NASA and HISUI on ISS. For coming satellites or instruments, JAXA is preparing CPR on EarthCARE satellite of ESA, developing satellites, ALOS-3 carrying the “wide-swath and high-resolution optical imager”, ALOS-4 carrying PALSAR-3 and GOSAT-GW carrying TANSO-3 + AMSR-3 as follow-on mission for GOSAT-2. And the first Japanese Lidar mission MOLI on ISS is expected to entering development phase. In addition to follow-on mission studies, several new studies are underway for near future missions, such as Wind Lidar mission and new geostationary missions for land.

Aqua MODIS has successfully operated for more than 20 years and continuously generated a wide range of data products to enable and support the remote sensing community and users worldwide for their studies of the Earth’s system. Although it is currently operated in its extended mission phase, Aqua MODIS continues to make high quality global observations of the Earth’s surface and its on-board calibrators (OBC) remain capable of performing their design functions, providing essential calibration data sets to help monitor on-orbit changes in sensor responses. In this paper, we provide an overview of Aqua MODIS on-orbit calibration methodologies for both reflective solar bands and thermal emissive bands, illustrate its on-orbit performance over 20 years using examples derived from OBC measurements, lunar observations, and Earth view response trends, and describe various calibration improvements made over its entire mission. We focus on several issues identified since launch, such as solar diffuser degradation, electronic crosstalk, and on-orbit changes in sensor response versus scan-angle, and discuss the approaches developed to mitigate their impact on sensor calibration quality.

During the early on-orbit phase Landsat 9 performed an under flight of Landsat 8 in November 2021 which provided a unique opportunity to cross compare measurements from the two OLI sensors. Surface reflectance measurements were collected at two desert sites in the western US, Alkali Lake and Ivanpah Playa, coincident with the satellite overpasses. Surface measurements with the Calibration and Test Site SI-Traceable Transfer Radiometer (CaTSSITTR) were collected as part of the field deployment. CaTSSITTR data combined with in-situ atmospheric measurements are used to predict top-of-atmosphere reflectance for comparison with the OLI and OLI-2.