A 20-year Review of the Performance and Operation of the MOPITT Instrument
Abstract
The MOPITT (Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere) instrument has been providing continuous measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) total column and CO profile on a global scale since its launch on the Terra spacecraft on 18th of December 1999. MOPITT is one of the first few correlation spectroscopy instruments that utilizes a combination of Length Modulating Cells (LMCs), Pressure Modulating Cells (PMCs) and Stirling cryocoolers to observe CO in the troposphere from space. After 20 years of operation, an overview of the performance of MOPITT provides significant insight into the operation of such systems in the space environment.
An analysis of the engineering telemetry of MOPITT's core sub-systems since launch is presented. Notable successes include: (1) the redundancy design of the instrument to compensate for subsystem failure or anomalies; (2) the longevity of the several moving parts; (3) achieving a stable thermal and thereby maintaining a stable gain on the pixels of the detectors; and (4) the longest living operational instrument that measures atmospheric CO profiles. As the lifetime has been extended, effort has been expended to ensure that the slow degradation of the instrument has been offset. As a result, the multi-decade data set is based on a single instrument, rather than the original concept of multiple instruments. MOPITT was built in Canada by COMDEV of Cambridge, ON. Data processing is performed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. The Terra satellite is funded and operated by NASA, and the MOPITT instrument and operations are funded by the Canadian Space Agency.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC11K1115D
- Keywords:
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- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE