The principal aim of the SLSTR instrument mission on-board Sentinel-3 is to provide a reference Land Surface Temperature and Sea Surface Temperature dataset for climate data records. SLSTR has been developed to retrieve global coverage sea surface skin temperatures with zero bias and an uncertainty of ± 0.3 K for a 5° by 5° latitude–longitude area, having a temporal stability of 0.1 K/decade. The instrument has been designed to fulfil these mission aims.
The image below shows the major components of SLSTR, including the oblique and nadir earth views that provide it's unique dual-view capability, the on-board black body sources for in-orbit calibration of the infrared channels, and the VISCAL unit to allow on-orbit calibration at the visible-short wave infrared wavelengths.