Mission & Instrument

Mission

Table 1. ECOSTRESS Mission Characteristics

The ECOSTRESS radiometer has been deployed on International Space Station (ISS) on the Japanese Experiment Module - External Facility (JEM-EF) site 10. At this location, the radiometer scan is perpendicular to the ISS velocity

Figure 1. Japanese Experiment Module on International Space Station

Figure 2. ECOSTRESS seen from underneath on ISS

The ISS was photographed by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet from Crew Dragon Endeavour after undocking. Pesquet, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, and JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide executed a fly around maneuver to take pictures of the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth after 199 days in space as part of Expeditions 65 and 66. Also posted here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/sets/72157720187084178/

The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a flyaround of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module’s space-facing port on Nov. 8, 2021. ECOSTRESS can be seen in the zoomed in picture-in-picture.

Instrument

The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) will be implemented by placing the existing space-ready Prototype HyspIRI Thermal Infrared Radiometer (PHyTIR) on the International Space Station (ISS) and using it to gather the measurements needed to address the science goals and objectives. PHyTIR was developed under the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program (IIP). From the ISS, PHyTIR will provide data with 38-m in-track by 69-m cross-track spatial resolution (science requirement is 100 m) and predicted temperature sensitivity of ≤0.1 K (science requirement is 0.3 K). The ISS orbit allows excellent coverage of the selected targets including diurnal coverage. The existing hardware was developed to reduce the cost and risk for the thermal infrared radiometer on the future Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) mission, A double-sided scan mirror, rotating at a constant 25.4 rpm, allows the telescope to view a 53°-wide nadir cross-track swath as well as two internal blackbody calibration targets every 1.29 seconds (Note that the two-sided mirror rotating at 25.4 rpm provides 46.6 sweeps per minute). The optical signal is focused by a telescope onto the 65 K focal plane containing a custom 13.2-μm-cutoff mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT) infrared detector array. Spectral filters on the focal plane define 5 spectral bands in the 8-12.5 μm range and an additional band at 1.6 um for geolocation and cloud detection (six bands total). The focal plane is cooled by two commercial Thales cryocoolers. Electronics consist of six build-to-print and four commercial boards. Heat rejection for the ECOSTRESS cryocoolers and electronics is provided by the cooling fluid loop on the ISS Japanese Experiment Module External Facility (JEM-EF). ECOSTRESS can fit any of the nine JEM-EF payload locations but will be deployed at Site 10 (one of the two end locations).

Table 2. ECOSTRESS Radiometer Characteristics