Calibration and Characterization of the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer

Prior to shipment of the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) to the AURA spacecraft in late April, 2003, the instrument was put through an extensive series of thermal vacuum tests, over an 8-month period, to characterize and calibrate the instrument performance. During these tests, measurements were made to characterize the field-of-view, radiometric and spectral performance of the instrument. The measurements were highly successful in for quantifying key instrument parameters and also permitted the characterization of many unexpected, but important instrument features. This presentation will describe the measurements and results of the TES pre-flight calibration.