SUOMI NPP VIIRS reflective solar band radiometric calibration

The Visible-Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is a primary sensor onboard the National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched on October 28, 2011. It collects data over the spectral range of 0.4-12.5 um and consists of 15 reflective solar bands (RSB) and 7 thermal emissive bands (TEB). Like the heritage sensor MODIS (MOderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), VIIRS has a set of On-Board Calibrators (OBC) that provide data for radiometric calibration of the instrument in offline ground processing. The reflective bands use sunlight reflected from a Solar Diffuser (SD) after passing through an attenuating Solar Diffuser Screen (SDS) as a reference illumination source. The emissive bands use an On-Board Calibrator Blackbody (OBC BB) maintained at a constant elevated temperature as a reference illumination source. The Space View (SV) port provides a dark reference scene for background subtraction to remove any detector biases for both reflective and emissive bands.