ABSL Space Products is proud to announce the award of a contract for the design, development, and manufacture of the infrared calibration system and high-precision temperature acquisition electronics for the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR). This instrument will be launched in 2012 on the Sentinel-3 spacecraft as part of the joint ESA and EC GMES programme. The contract was awarded to ABSL Space Products by Jena-Optronik GmbH following a competitive tender process.

The SLSTR is a multi-channel optical imager in the visible-infrared spectrum providing land and sea temperatures to an accuracy of better that 0.3 K as data for advanced numerical weather forecasting models and the monitoring of global warming.

The infrared calibration system, commonly known as a black body, is a highly uniform temperature source, with low reflectivity and ultra precision temperature read-out system. It provides an accurate source of radiance that will be intermittently viewed by the SLSTR instrument during its seven year operational life to calibrate the instrument�s detectors and optics. Typically, such devices have a reflectivity of less than 0.5% and a temperature measurement precision of better than 50mK.

Additionally, ABSL has been selected to provide the Temperature Acquisition Electronics (TAE) which provides forty-eight channels of precision temperature telemetry from various components of the SLSTR instrument.

ABSL is Europe�s leading supplier of such systems with twelve highly accurate black body reference sources in orbit and a further six awaiting to be launched. ABSL has provided these systems for other missions such as AATSR, MIPAS, Severi, GERB, IASI as well as a number of ground based systems with even higher accuracy.

ABSL Space Products Director Rob Spurrett said �I am very proud of the contribution that ABSL will be making to this mission. ABSL�s calibration sources were used on the early ATSR instruments which remain world-beating with respect to their precision. The data from AATSR will be extended by SLSTR for a further twenty years providing a continuous data set that will further scientific understanding of our planet and its climate.�