OLI-2 telescope post-alignment performance

The Operational Land Imager 2 (OLI-2) is flying on the Landsat 9 satellite that launched on September 27, 2021. OLI-2 collects data in nine spectral bands in the solar reflective region with a ground sample distance (GSD) of 30 m for all bands except the panchromatic band, which has a 15 m GSD. OLI-2 is the second in a series of instruments flying aboard Landsat platforms. Its predecessor, the Operational Land Imager (OLI), onboard the Landsat 8 satellite, has been operational since 2013. Both satellites fly in a sun-synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of 705 km. The OLI-2 telescope completed alignment in December 2017 at Ball Aerospace. In this paper we present a summary of the as-designed and as-built performance of the telescope that demonstrates compliance to the OLI-2 requirements. In addition, we provide a comparison of the OLI-2 telescope performance to the reported OLI telescope performance. Performance parameters discussed include measurement of effective focal length, modulation transfer function, optical throughput, polarization, stray light, and pointing.