QUANTIFYING THE ADDED VALUE OF AGILE VIEWING RELATIVE TO NON-AGILE VIEWING TO INCREASE THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF SYNTHETIC SATELLITE RETRIEVALS

Abstract

Satellite sensors typically employ a “non-agile” viewing strategy in which the boresight angle between the sensor and the observed portion of Earth’s surface remains static throughout operation. With a non-agile viewing strategy, it is relatively straightforward to predict where observations will be collected in the future. However, non-agile viewing is limited because the sensor is unable to vary its boresight angle as a function of time. To mitigate this limitation, this project develops an algorithm to model agile viewing strategies to explore how adding agile pointing into a sensor platform can increase desired information content of satellite retrievals. The synthetic retrievals developed in this project are ultimately used in an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) to determine how agile pointing has the potential to improve the characterization of global freshwater resources.