Radiometric recalibration procedure for landsat-5 thematic mapper data

The landsat-5 (L5) satellite was launched on March 01, 1984, with a design life of three years. Incredibly, the L5 thematic mapper (TM) has collected data for 23 years. Over this time, the detectors have aged, and its radiometric characteristics have changed since launch. The calibration procedures and parameters have also changed with time. Revised radiometric calibrations have improved the radiometric accuracy of recently processed data; however, users with data that were processed prior to the calibration update do not benefit from the revisions. A procedure has been developed to give users the ability to recalibrate their existing level 1 (L1) products without having to purchase reprocessed data from the U.S. geological survey (USGS). The accuracy of the recalibration is dependent on the knowledge of the prior calibration applied to the data. The "work order" file, included with standard national land archive production system (NLAPS) data products, gives parameters that define the applied calibration. These are the internal calibrator (IC) calibration parameters or the default prelaunch calibration, if there were problems with the IC calibration. This paper details the recalibration procedure for data processed using IC, in which users have the work order file.