Absolute radiometric calibration of PMS2 onboard Jilin-1 GP02 satellite using the Moon

The accurate radiometric calibration is very important for remote sensing optical sensors. Numerous astronomical measurements and model analyses have shown that the Moon is extremely stable in reflectance properties and can serve as a great absolute reference source. Jilin-1 satellite has made long-period observations of the Moon over a wide range of phase angles. However, the spectra displayed fluctuations after radiometric calibration with the provided coefficients. This is inconsistent with the lunar reflectance spectra, which are smooth and generally no sharp absorption. In this study, we conducted radiometric calibration for PMS2 onboard Jilin-1 Guangpu02 (GP02) satellite using the Moon as the calibration source. The calibration results were validated based on different lunar geological terrain, i.e., maria and highlands. The lunar phase curve obtained through the application of the lunar calibration coefficients derived in this study show good agreement with the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) and PLEIADES data. The results indicate that: (1) the spectra become much smoother after lunar calibration, consistent with the characteristics of lunar spectra; (2) the lunar calibration results demonstrate exceeding linearity, with average linear fit uncertainty of 0.69% and goodness-of-fit ( R 2 ) of 0.9997 for the calibration coefficients; (3) the average relative difference between the phase curves of PMS2 and SeaWiFS is 3.6% and 4.66% with PLEIADES. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness of our lunar calibration method. Although this method was specifically applied to the PMS2, the lunar calibration method is expected to be applicable to other Earth-orbiting satellites.