Preliminary On-Orbit Performance Test of the First Polarimetric Synchronization Monitoring Atmospheric Corrector (SMAC) On-Board High-Spatial Resolution Satellite Gao Fen Duo Mo (GFDM)

Obtaining accurate atmospheric parameters, e.g., aerosol optical depth (AOD) and column water vapor (CWV), is important for the quantitative atmospheric correction (AC) of the high-spatial resolution remote sensing images. However, due to the strong temporal and spatial changes of the atmospheric parameters, it will be a challenge to ensure spatiotemporal registration of the satellite images given the AC parameters obtained separately from ground-based or other satellite products, which affects significantly the accuracy of the AC. The China National Space Administration launched a high resolution and multimode imaging satellite [Gao Fen Duo Mo (GFDM)] in July 2020, which has multifunctional observation modes and flexible mobility, with a high-spatial resolution imaging sensor (0.42 m in panchromatic and 1.6 m in multispectrum) and equipped the synchronization monitoring atmospheric corrector (SMAC) sensor. As the first atmospheric corrector with polarization detection capability on-board high-spatial resolution satellite, SMAC is designed to obtain multispectral intensity and polarized data and to retrieve synchronously AC parameters in the same field of view with main sensor. Based on the SMAC in-orbit test data, a lookup table method using the optimized inversion framework and a dual-channel ratio retrieval method are developed to derive AOD and CWV, respectively, in this article. The AOD and CWV results are validated against the AERosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET). The preliminary test of AC performance on the multispectral images of GFDM satellite indicates that SMAC is of great potential to improve the quality of the main sensor’s image.