New GOES landmark selection and measurement methods for improved on-orbit image navigation and registration performance

This paper demonstrates improvements in GOES on-orbit Image Navigation and Registration (INR) performance obtained from a careful method of landmark selection, coupled with changes in landmark measurement techniques. An iterative process was used which began with a search for characteristics influencing landmark stability over time, such as topography, thermal changes, and apparent sea/land boundaries, and ended with measurable improvements in the areas of navigation, within-frame, frame-to-frame, and channel-to-channel registration. An operational shift from manual to automatic landmark correlation proved to be an essential requirement influencing the overall results. Specification requirements are used as an absolute means to estimate INR performance changes for GOES 8, but whenever possible, results obtained here are also placed in perspective by comparison with previous GOES INR results. Finally, the methodology and tools described are applied to the new GOES 10 satellite in order to estimate its performance.