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The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has established a Regional Coastal Oceanography with Nanosatellites (ReCON) project which will explore the ability of high-resolution nanosatellites to monitor coastal, estuarine, riverine, and other maritime environments in support of U.S. Navy operations. The project will initially focus on using data from the almost 150+ Planet “Dove” nanosatellites which fly in “flocks” acquiring remotely sensed data from sunlight reflecting off the earth surface. The usefulness of remotely sensed data within our research and operations is determined by the ability to accurately perform atmospheric correction and compute water leaving radiances (Lw), which are then normalized (nLw) and form the basis for the generation of remote sensing reflectance and other inherent and apparent optical property products. These nanosatellites have a single infrared band, although two such bands are typically required to automatically select an appropriate aerosol model during atmospheric correction, prior to estimating nLw. While early in the project, this initial study will assess nanosatellite capabilities to accurately retrieve nLw measurements by specifying the aerosol model selection during the atmospheric correction process. Here we present nLw retrievals for a variety of Planet nanosatellite imagery covering an entire year over a northern island of Venezuela, which covers coastal and open ocean type waters. The nLw retrievals from the nanosatellites using forced aerosol models are compared to coincident nLw retrievals from the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to gauge the potential reliability and accuracy of using nanosatellite imagery as a competent data source for ocean color optics.
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