Introduction

The EO-1 mission is a technology mission whose primary objective has been to demonstrate and evaluate selected advanced technologies carried aboard the spacecraft. This demonstration has been carried out in the context of meeting Earth science needs in the 21st century that would enhance the capabilities and reduce the cost of obtaining Landsat-like data. A secondary but still important objective has been to demonstrate imaging spectrometer instrument technology and explore Earth science applications of hyperspectral data that relate to future requirements of NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise. Science validation related to these objectives has been ongoing since shortly after the launch of EO-1 in November 2000 under the auspices of the Biospheric Sciences Branch, Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics of the Earth Sciences Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The emphasis of the validation has been on characterizing the performance of the EO-1 instruments in acquiring remotely sensed measurements that contribute to a variety of important earth science applications. The pervasive theme of EO-1’s science validation activity is objective (quantitative) validation through comparison with data gathered by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) on board the Landsat 7 satellite and by airborne and ground-based systems.