OCO-3 SAMs: Scheduling Performance Statistics During the Mission and Lessons Learned

The inclusion of an agile pointing mirror on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) instrument has allowed for the acquisition of Snapshot Area Maps (SAMs), allowing a new way to examine city- and smaller-scale carbon dioxide emissions. The SAMs give nearly contiguous spatial coverage with relatively small footprints of an area of approximately 50x90 km, something not available from any previous dry column averaged CO2 (XCO2) orbital remote sensing instrument. While OCO-3 has collected more than 15000 SAM and targets as of August 1, 2022, the on-orbit performance did not reach pre-launch expectations. We examine the on-orbit performance of our SAM scheduling to try to quantize which of the various constraints has had the largest effect on the ability to schedule an observation and how this knowledge can be used to inform future missions. Additionally, we examine other SAM acquisition statistics, such as the success rate, site sampling frequency, cloudiness, and spatial coverage as reflected in the OCO-3 v10 data set.