Requirement sensitivity studies for a future Landsat sensor

The Landsat program has collected imagery of the Earth for the past 40 years. Although both Landsat 7 and 8 are currently operating on-orbit, the next generation Landsat mission is already being planned. Concept studies for this mission include reproducing the Landsat 8 design (mainly push-broom imaging architecture). The definition of science requirements is an important step towards the development of instrument specifications. At this early stage, a re-evaluation of the Landsat requirements is beneficial since they might be flexible enough to relax in some areas to possibly save on manufacturing costs or may need to be tightened in other areas to produce better science products. The investigations presented here focused on spatial aliasing and spectral banding effects. The specifications of these two key performance requirements were taken from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor as a starting point for the analyses. They were then adjusted to determine their effects on the final image products through the use of standard radiometry equations and synthetic Earth scene data. The results of the modeling efforts for these two requirements concepts are presented here and could be used as a template for future instrument studies.