Evolution and trends in atmospheric solar-backscatter instruments
conference paper
For many years, instruments in the line of SCIAMACHY and OMI have been providing data on trace gases relevant in the ozone cycle, climate and air quality. With OMI the spatial resolution was improved considerably, allowing the data to be used more for air quality applications next to climate and ozone research. The success of SCIAMACHY and OMI lead to new initiatives of which the TROPOMI on ESA's Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite is the most advanced, which is currently being integrated for launch in 2015. The paper gives an overview of the technological developments which enabled the success of the atmospheric solar-backscatter instruments and TROPOMI in particular. New developments are a.o. the free-form telescope design, Silicon immersed gratings and polarization scramblers. The paper presents in some detail the performances and status of the TROPOMI program. It is anyhow clear that TROPOMI benefits from the fact that the design is very robust and thus capable to deal with possible issues. The first electrical-model tests have been performed this summer and we are working to integrate the instrument heading for performance test and calibration next year. Having seen the development of SCIAMACHY towards OMI, TROPOMI and the later instruments, the paper addresses the potentials and limits of using the atmospheric solar-backscatter technique for other than scientific use, in particular for legislation enforcement.
Topics
TNO Identifier
513268
ISSN
00741795
ISBN
9781629939094
Publisher
International Astronautical Federation IAF
Source title
64th International Astronautical Congress 2013, IAC 2013, 23-27 September 2013, Beijing, China
Collation
6 p.
Pages
2768-2773
Files
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