A Stellar Occultation Sensor Using Absorption and Refraction of Starlight for Atmospheric Profile Measurements
Abstract
The Self-Calibrating H2O and O3 Nighttime Environmental Remote Sensor (SCHOONERS) is a compact, integrated UV-IR imaging spectrograph and imager for spaceborne stellar occultation measurements, developed under the NASA Instrument Incubator Program and based on the measurement technique and retrieval demonstrated by the MSX/UVISI instrument. The imaging spectrograph, covering a spectral range between 300 and 900 nm, measures the varying absorption of starlight as a star sets through the Earth's atmosphere to determine vertical profiles of atmospheric constituents. The relative star position measured by the co-aligned imager not only provides position feedback to the active-tracking loop but also measures the star refraction angle for determining the atmospheric density and temperature profiles. The instrument has a 25-cm-diameter aperture and employs a two-axis gimbaled telescope to provide acquisition and tracking of the star. It also uses a two-axis high-precision vernier mirror to correct for spacecraft jitter and maintain the star within the field-of-view. SCHOONERS' hardware and accompanying software have been demonstrated in end-to-end laboratory tests. SCHOONERS' built-in image tracking and motion compensation mechanism, coupled with its small size and limited spacecraft resource requirements, makes it suitable for deployment on existing and future spacecraft platforms as an instrument-of-opportunity. In this paper, stellar occultation sensing technique, experiment requirements, and SCHOONERS design and expected performance will be presented.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFM.A54A..09M
- Keywords:
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- 0350 Pressure;
- density;
- and temperature;
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- 3394 Instruments and techniques