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In many cases it can be a basic condition for successful realiza
tion of planned researches at carrying out of complex space ex
periments.
During the programs realization it must be solved a wide range
of scientific problems, part of which is an associated sub
satellite (calibration) measurements. Such measurements are
needed for
• calibration of remote sensing devices, control of their
working capacity in functioning, experimental data
informativeness in remote control tasks,
• working out of new, improvement and check of
existing geophysical parameters restoring techniques;
• development of techniques of joint interpretation of
the space data received in various spectral bands and
results synchronous sub-satellite measurements,
• validation of space data,
• complex studying of natural objects by use of the
information received from various levels and with the
different spatial resolution.
For calibration uniform sites of terrestrial and water surfaces
with known radiating and geophysical parameters are selected.
The sizes of these sites are defined by resolution of measuring
devices. For the radio spectrum - from a few kilometers to tens
and hundreds kilometers depending on the wavelength. Test
sites (on which subsatellite measurements are carried out
synchronously or quasi synchronous with satellite observations)
are chosen in different regions of the Earth for wider coverage
of studied objects types. List of measured on test sites
parameters, content of measurements are determined with
concrete purpose of test site and experiment tasks.
In Attachments to Programs are presented:
• structure and characteristics of scientific equipment;
• levels of the space data presentation (processing),
• proposals on development of Scientific programs.
It is worthwhile to coordinate the developed Scientific
programs with similar researches of existing and planned to
realization in near future of russian and foreign space projects.
At the first stage of our space experiments the main goals are to
develop and test new space microwave radiometric instrument
in new band of electromagnetic spectrum in order to solve the
following technical objectives:
• investigation of RFI situation in L-band all over the
globe,
• development of in-flight calibration techniques,
• development of subpixel data processing algorithms
for information simultaneously obtained from
different satellites with different spatial resolutions.
During this stage we expect to select main regions with low
level of RFI and made adjustments of preliminary prepared data
calibration techniques.
Relatively low space resolution of the L-band radiometric
systems restricts us in the list of possible applications. In the
large field of view of the radiometer may be objects with quite
different characteristics of emission. In this case high
importance has development of algorithms for subpixel
microwave data processing. During the data processing will be
used simultaneous data from all available satellites with
microwave and optical instruments having different space
resolution.
At the second stage it is expected to concentrate more on the
scientific objectives and environment investigations. Main
directions are:
• soil moisture retrieval over the territories in regional
and global scales,
• sea salinity estimation in open ocean,
• study of the geothermal activity regions,
• investigation of energy-exchange in the ocean-land-
atmosphere system (in combination with the data of
other sensors).
4. CONCLUSIONS
Experiments with space L-band microwave radiometers will
provide new information on key characteristics of the oceans
and land surface, mostly sea salinity and soil moisture. To
achieve this goal it will be required to solve several technical
problems concerning calibration, removing RFI effects and etc.
Scientific program of the experiments should be coordinated
with similar programs of European and USA projects.
5. REFERENCES
1. Hubert M. J. P. Barré, Duesmann , and Yann H. Kerr
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6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by grants RFBR 08-05-00890-
a, 09-02-00780-a.