Global Upper Atmosphere Wind and Temperature Measurements from Iss: a Pathfinder Mission for a Breakthrough Technology

Simultaneous wind and temperature sounding from near cloud-top to 200+km, day and night is possible using a Doppler Modulated Gas Correlation technique (Gordley and Marshall, 2011). This technique has now been independently analyzed by Ball engineers who have designed a pathfinder prototype instrument (DWTS_Doppler Wind and Temperature Sounder), suitable for implementation on the International Space Station (ISS) or a microsatellite platform. This small, static, moderately cooled mid IR imager promises to achieve global monitoring of upper atmosphere wind and temperature with unprecedented and continuous spatial temporal and diurnal coverage, opening the door to new domains of research and forecasting. This talk briefly reviews the technique, the implementation on ISS and the vision for a future smallsat constellation observatory.