Engineering topics

McCorkel, Joel T.

Publications and source records attributed to McCorkel, Joel T..

3 records

NASA NTRS2018

Landsat 9 TIRS-2 Performance Results Based on Subsystem-Level Testing

Landsat 9 is the next in the series of Landsat satellites and has a complement of two pushbroom imagers: Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) that samples the solar reflective spectrum with nine channels and Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 (TIRS-2) samples the thermal infrared spectrum with two channels. The first builds of these sensors, OLI and TIRS, were launched on Landsat 8 in 2013 and Landsat 9 is expected to launch in December 2020. TIRS-2 is designed and built to continue the Landsat data record and satisfy the needs of the remote sensing community. There are two sets of requirements considered for planning the component, subsystem and instrument level tests for TIRS-2: performance requirements and Special Calibration Test Requirements (SCTR). The performance requirements specify key spectral, spatial, radiometric, and operational parameters of TIRS-2 while the SCTRs specify parameters of how the instrument is tested. Several requirements can only be verified at the instrument level, but many performance metrics can be assessed earlier in prelaunch testing at the subsystem level. A test program called TIRS Imaging Performance and Cryoshell Evaluation (TIPCE) was developed to characterize TIRS-2 spectral, spatial, and scattered-light rejection performance at the telescope and detector subsystem level. There were three thermal vacuum campaigns in TIPCE that occurred from November 2017 to March 2018. This work shows results of TIPCE data analysis which provide confidence that key requirements will be met at instrument level with a few minor waivers. A full complement of performance testing will be done at the TIRS-2 instrument level for final verification in late 2018 through Spring 2019.

scatter↗

NASA NTRS2018

Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 Architecture and Design

The Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 (TIRS-2) will fly aboard the Landsat 9 spacecraft and leverages the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) design currently flying on Landsat 8. TIRS-2 will provide similar science data as TIRS, but is not a buildto-print rebuild due to changes in requirements and improvements in absolute accuracy. The heritage TIRS design has been modified to reduce the influence of stray light and to add redundancy for higher reliability over a longer mission life. The TIRS-2 development context differs from the TIRS scenario, adding to the changes. The TIRS-2 team has also learned some lessons along the way.

Hair, Jason H.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Interactions Between Temperature and Intercellular CO2 Concentration in Controlling Leaf Isoprene Emission Rates

Plant isoprene emissions have been linked to several reaction pathways involved in atmospheric photochemistry. Evidence exists from a limited set of past observations that isoprene emission rate (I(sub s)) decreases as a function of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, and that increased temperature suppresses the CO2 effect. We studied interactions between intercellular CO2 concentration (C(sub I)) and temperature as they affect I(sub s) in field-grown hybrid poplar trees in one of the warmest climates on earth - the Sonoran Desert of the southwestern United States. We observed an unexpected midsummer down regulation of I(sub s) despite the persistence of relatively high temperatures. High temperature suppression of the I(sub s):C(sub I) relation occurred at all times during the growing season, but sensitivity of I(sub s) to increased C(sub I) was greatest during the midsummer period when I(subs) was lowest. We interpret the seasonal down regulation of I(sub s) and increased sensitivity of I(sub s) to C(sub I) as being caused by weather changes associated with the onset of a regional monsoon system. Our observations on the temperature suppression of the I(sub s):C(sub I) relation are best explained by the existence of a small pool of chloroplastic inorganic phosphate, balanced by several large, connected metabolic fluxes, which together, determine the C(sub I) and temperature dependencies of phosphoenolpyruvate import into the chloroplast.

Monson, Russell K.↗