In-Orbit Geometric Calibration of Firebird's Infrared Line Cameras

Abstract

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has developed and launched two small satellites (TET-1 and BIROS) as part of the FireBIRD mission. Both are capable to detect and observe fire related high temperature events (HTE) from space with infrared cameras. To enable a quick localization of the fires direct georeferencing of the images is required. Therefore the camera geometry measurements with laboratory set-up on ground have to be verified and validated using real data takes. This is achieved using ground control points (GCPs), identifiable in all spectral bands, allowing the investigations of the whole processing chain used for georeferencing. It is shown how the accuracy of direct georeferencing was significantly improved by means of in-orbit calibration using GCPs and how the workflow for processing and reprocessing was developed.