Facility for Measuring the Spatial Uniformity of the Radiation Power of the Surface of the Large-Area Blackbody

The new stage of the development of space-borne information systems is the creation of the Global Earth Observation System. For the full functioning of such a system, it is necessary to provide the uniformity of measurements of all national systems as members of the global system, with high-quality measurement data. This requires the implementation of a high level of ground (prelaunch) calibration of Earth remote sensing instruments. To solve these problems, there were created calibration facilities on the basis of large vacuum chambers with vacuum reference radiation sources, including sources on the basis of black bodies with a wide aperture of 500 mm in the spectral range from \(3~{\upmu }\hbox {m}\) to \(14~{\upmu }\hbox {m}\). Such a facility was created by FGUP “VNIIOFI” in cooperation with FGUP “TsNIIMash”. The ground calibration of Earth remote sensing instruments is being carried out by using blackbody models as radiation sources with known spectral radiance. Facility for ground calibration of remote sensing devices on spectral radiance is based on the usage of a large-aperture blackbody (LABB) with 500 mm diameter and working temperature range from 213 K to 423 K, as a radiation source. This calibration setup comprises a set of reference blackbodies, such as a blackbody on the phase transition of Gallium, a variable-temperature blackbody with temperature range from 213 K to 423 K, a reference blackbody cooled with liquid nitrogen, and IR Fourier spectrometer utilized as a comparator to perform LABB calibration on spectral radiance. The second important characteristic of LABB is the uniformity of spectral radiance across the radiating aperture of this blackbody. The paper describes the device for measuring the spatial homogeneity of the radiation power of the LABB’s radiating surface. This device is based on the use of two-color InSb-CdHgTe detector equipped with modulator and IR lens, which are mounted on a two-axis translation stage suitable for operation in vacuum and installed in the vacuum chamber against LABB. During the measurement of the radiation uniformity, the modulator sequentially sends probing radiation spot either from the LABB’s surface or from the thermostatic radiation source to the detector input. The principle of operation of the device is described. The results of measurements of the radiation power homogeneity across the LABB’s radiating aperture are presented in wide-temperature range.