The wide-angle Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) onboard South Korea’s first lunar orbiter, Danuri, is a pioneering instrument designed to conduct the first global polarimetric and high-phase-angle survey of the Moon. Precise geometric calibration is critical for this mission, particularly due to PolCam’s highly oblique viewing geometry, which introduces significant topographic distortion. We present a comprehensive on-orbit geometric calibration that relies on 160,256 tie points derived from matching features between PolCam images and the well-orthorectified global map of the Kaguya Multiband Imager (MI). This dataset allows us to address two fundamental challenges: (1) the accurate reconstruction of the observation time for each line of an observation strip via a simple linear model, and (2) the refinement of the precise camera model, geometric model for PolCam optics. Our optimization method for these two challenges transforms the 2D image coordinates of identified features into 3D lunar coordinates and minimizes the reprojection error against the reference coordinates provided by the Kaguya MI map. From the refined observation time and camera model, we compute the precise longitude, latitude, and elevation of each pixel of an observed image. These estimated 3D coordinates are then used to generate orthorectified images, the final product of the geometric calibration. The resulting calibration achieves a geometric precision comparable to that of previous lunar orbiters and establishes the foundational framework necessary to produce geometrically-corrected data products of PolCam.

The Wide-Angle Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) is installed on the Korea’s lunar orbiter, Danuri, which launched on August 5, 2022. The mission objectives of PolCam are to construct photometric maps at a wavelength of 336 nm and polarization maps at 461 and 748 nm, with a phase angle range of 0◦–135◦ and a spatial resolution of less than 100 m. PolCam is an imager using the push-broom method and has two cameras, Cam 1 and Cam 2, with a viewing angle of 45◦ to the right and left of the spacecraft’s direction of orbit. We conducted performance tests in a laboratory setting before installing PolCam’s flight model on the spacecraft. We analyzed the CCD’s dark current, flat-field frame, spot size, and light flux. The dark current was obtained during thermal / vacuum test with various temperatures and the flat-field frame data was also obtained with an integrating sphere and tungsten light bulb. We describe the calibration method and results in this study.

Polarimetric measurements of the lunar surface from lunar orbit soon will be available via Wide-Field Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) onboard the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), which is planned to be launched in mid 2022. To provide calibration data for the PolCam, we are conducting speckle polarimetric measurements of the nearside of the Moon from the Earth’s ground. It appears that speckle imaging of the Moon for scientific purposes has not been attempted before, and there is need for a procedure to create a “lucky image” from a number of observed speckle images. As a first step of obtaining calibration data for the PolCam from the ground, we search for the best sharpness measure for lunar surfaces. We then calculate the minimum number of speckle images and the number of images to be shift-and-added for higher resolution (sharpness) and signal-to-noise ratio.