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    UK Avalon Member bogeyman's Avatar
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    Default NASA uses moonlight to improve satellite accuracy

    https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nasa-m...-accuracy.html

    NASA's airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, flew aboard NASA's ER-2 aircraft from March 12 to 16 to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Moon. Reflected moonlight is a steady source of light that researchers are taking advantage of to improve the accuracy and consistency of measurements among Earth-observing satellites.


    "The Moon is extremely stable and not influenced by factors on Earth like climate to any large degree. It becomes a very good calibration reference, an independent benchmark, by which we can set our instruments and see what's happening with our planet," said air-LUSI's principal investigator, Kevin Turpie, a research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

    The air-LUSI flights are part of NASA's comprehensive satellite calibration and validation efforts. The results will compliment ground-based sites such as Railroad Valley Playa in Nevada, and together will provide orbiting satellites with a robust calibration dataset.

    NASA has more than 20 Earth-observing satellites that give researchers a global perspective on the interconnected Earth system. Many of them measure light waves reflected, scattered, absorbed, or emitted by Earth's surface, water and atmosphere. This light includes visible light, which humans see, as well as invisible ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, and everything in between. Like musical instruments in an orchestra, the individual satellite instruments need to be "in tune" with each other in order for researchers to get the most out of their data. By using the Moon as a "tuning fork," scientists can more easily compare data from different satellites to look at global changes over long periods of time.

    Since a great deal of our lives are dependent on this technology it is really important

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