Development of an Earth Observation Optical Payload Simulator

The importance on the simulation of earth observation optical payloads has been recently emphasized in order to estimate on-orbit imaging performance of the payloads. The estimation should consider all aspects of payload development; design, manufacture, test, assembly, launch and space environment. Until recently several studies have been focused the evaluation of the individual factors rather than the integrated. This paper presents the development of an integrated payload simulator. The simulator analyzes the payload imaging performance based on MTF(Modulation Transfer Function) calculations of the major factors (Diffraction, Aberration, Detector integration, Image motion and etc.) and the simulator can generate realistic artificial earth images as taken by defined earth observation payloads. The simulator is developed for the use of evaluating pre- and post-launch imaging performance and assisting on-board calibration of COMPSAT-3.