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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, December 10, 2012 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Bruce Guenther

"The Engineering Processes used for Verification on the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi - NPOESS Preparatory Project (S-NPP); or, Insights into Strategic Uses of Similarity and Faith-Based Verification along with an Uphill Battle against Augustine's Laws"

ABSTRACT -- The Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NPOESS Preparatory Project Observatory is the follow-on to the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) now flying on the Earth Observatory System Terra and Aqua Observatories. The NPP (renamed Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership) is a NASA contribution to what now is called the Joint Polar Satellite System, and all the sensors now are being built by NASA as acquisition agent to the JPSS Program owner agency, NOAA. JPSS began as NPOESS (National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System) which was a NOAA-DoD-NASA partnership and NPP is a NASA contribution to the NPOESS Program for an early flight and to serve as risk reduction for the comprehensive operational program. So NPP is a ‘nested-acronym’ and served as a specific contribution to the NPOESS partnership from a member of the partnership. It all seems a bit confusing, and some of the Program basis seems to defy traditional NASA approaches. We will spend some time at this colloquium discussing these differences in management styles, and show that they are highly congruent with many management principles described by Norm Augustine, in Augustine’s Laws. Mapping our problems into Augustine’s laws should be more fun than trying to work through the acronym soup earlier in this paragraph.

Specific engineering principles will be described that were developed to demonstrate the basis of expected performance of products from these sensors. We called these tools a set of Capability Matrices and constructed them in response to requests from NASA Headquarters for improved predicted product performance. Finally the capability and performance of the VIIRS Day Night Band will be described. The DNB is the major upgrade for VIIRS compared to MODIS and builds on the approaches developed on MODIS with true color imagery.

SPEAKER -- Bruce Guenther now is the JPSS Sensor Data Products Lead for NOAA in the Joint Polar Satellite System Program. Previously he led the SDR and Sensor Scientist organization for the Integrated Program Office for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. In 2009 Bruce served on-site at the location of the VIIRS sensor builder’s plant during the final system level testing of the NPP VIIRS sensor. During that time he provided the focus of the Government science and sensor performance advice to the on-site Government Program Manager, Ms. Pam Sullivan, and held the title Chief VIIRS Scientist. He initiated the concept of a capability assessment within the IPO to guide use-as-is assessments for the NPP sensors when those developments did not achieve performance allocated in engineering flow-down requirements. These concepts later evolved into the tools used by the Program to review with our Customer and User Agencies the extent that predicted product capability would meeting their Agency needs. The first spectro-radiometric calibration of a large aperture space-based measurement system was performed on VIIRS by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology when VIIRS was attached to the NPP spacecraft.

Guenther was a Goddard Civil Servant for more than 26 years, starting as a PI on a UV solar spectral irradiance sounding rocket program and ending as the Head of the MODIS Characterization Support Team which delivered the first public EOS Terra data product. Guenther was the first Project Scientist for Mr Scolese when Mr Scolese served as the EOS Platform and then Terra Project Manager and initiated the role of Project Scientist for Calibration and Data Product Validation within the Earth Observing System. He was principle lead for a CEOS Workshop, "Workshop on Strategies for Calibration and Validation of Global Change Measurements" in 1995. Guenther received the Ph.D. in 1974 from the University of Pittsburgh in Atmospheric Sciences. Guenther also supported other space-borne activities for the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory – 6 Sodium Airglow Experiment, the Nimbus 4, Nimbus 7 and Atmosphere Explorer – 5 ozone backscatter missions and the Shuttle SSBUV experiments.




Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov