Proposal Summary
The objective of this proposal is to develop and build two copies of a prototype Vic/Cal instrument, called MarONet, that can be packaged in a 40’ shipping container. These instruments will have all of the augmentations that we are doing to the current existing MOBY instrument, but be suitable for shipping to other locations. Commercial partners are integral to the proposed effort and allow the future development of a federation of distributed identical MarONet instruments deployed throughout the world, but centrally calibrated and characterized to enhance the vicarious calibration capabilities for use by ocean color satellites. By having at least one additional site in the S. Hemisphere (a possible site would be Western Australia, letter of support by David Antoine) the time required to collect a suitable number of high quality matchups will be reduced significantly. Other improvements currently being implemented at the MOBY site, that will be incorporated in this new design, will help to reduce the uncertainties of the MOBY measurement, already the highest quality measurement available, and thus reduce the number of matchups required to achieve a stable vicarious calibration of an ocean color satellite. The commercial vendors will supply completed major subsystems of the instrument to allow a pathway for further instruments to be built as desired. This project will develop the modular optical system, test the transportability of this optical system while maintaining its calibration, acquire and adapt additional instrumentation to test the stability before and after shipping, and extend the hyperspectral measurement capability from 370 -900 nm to 350-900 nm (to match the PACE objectives). This project will take three years, and the final product will be 2 prototype instruments suitable for initialization of a partner site. The entry level TRL is a mix between 2 and 7, depending on the portion of the project considered. The planned exit level TRL will be between 6 and 7.