Dongjun Yang

Total solar irradiance monitors, space instruments for measuring total solar irradiance on FY-3 satellites

Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) has been recorded daily by Total Solar Irradiance Monitors (TSIM) with overlapping measurements on FY-3 (Feng Yun-3) series satellites since 2008. Instrument descriptions, operation in space and flight performance of three TSIMs are presented in this paper. TSI is measured by electrical substitution radiometers integrated in TSIM, with traceability to SI. TSIM/FY-3A and TSIM/FY-3B share nearly the same design. Since TSIM/FY-3A and TSIM/FY-3B have no pointing system, the Sun is only observed when the Sunlight sweeps TSIM’s field-of-view and TSI measurements are influenced inevitably by solar pointing errors. TSIM/FY-3C, a radiometer package was constructed with a pointing system for solar tracking in order to achieve accurate solar pointing. TSIM/FY-3C was sent into orbit in September 2013 onboard FY-3C satellite. Daily TSI measurements have been performed by TSIM/FY-3C with autonomous accurate solar tracking for 1 year. TSIM/FY-3C is in a good instrument health according to its on-orbit data.

Design and calibration of the solar irradiance monitor

The solar irradiance monitor (SIM), with the design accuracy of 5%, used to monitor the secular changes of the total solar irradiance on FY-3 satellite, takes the sun-scanning measurement method on-orbit. Compared to the sun-tracking measurement method, this method simplifies the structure and cuts the cost, but the measuring accuracy is affected by the sun-synchronous orbit, sunlight incidence angle and the installing angle of the SIM in the satellite. Through the ground calibration experiment, studies on the affection of different sunlight incidence angles to the measurement accuracy. First, by the satellite tool kit (STK) simulation software, simulates the orbital parameters of the sun-synchronous satellite, and calculates the Sun ascension and declination at any time. By the orbit coordinate transformation matrix gets the components of the Sun vectors to the axes of the satellite, and base on the components designs the field of view and the installing angles of the SIM. Then, designs and completes the calibration experiment to calibrate the affection of the incidence angles. Selecting 11 different angles between the sunlight and the satellite X-axis, measures the total solar irradiance by the SIM at each angle, and compares to the irradiances of the SIAR reference radiometers, and gets the coefficient curves of the three channels of the SIM. Finally, by the quadratic fitting, gets the correction equations on the incidence angles: 5 2 3 R1 5.71x10-5α2 - 2.453 10-5 α2 1.0302, R2 = 2.84×10-5α2-1.965x10-3α+1.0314 and R3 =1.72x10-5α2-4.184x10-4α+0.9946. The equations will improve the on-orbit measurement accuracy of the solar irradiance, and are very important to the on-orbit data processing after the satellite launched.