Speaker
Dr
Didier Fussen
(BIRA-IASB)
Description
Belgium has proposed the ALTIUS (Atmospheric Limb Tracker for the Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere) mission to ESA as a stratospheric ozone profiler with complementary scientific objectives. It has now been approved as an EarthWatch mission in the ESA-Earth Observation programme. It will be operated from a micro-satellite of the PROBA class orbiting in a 700 km heliosynchronous orbit. The instrument will combine three 2D spectral imagers observing the Earth’s atmospheric bright limb from the ultraviolet to the NIR spectral range at moderate resolution (1-10 nm). The platform agility will allow for multi-mode observations by performing solar and stellar occultation observations, across the terminator and in the eclipse.
The spectrometer principle is based on Acousto-Optic Tunable Filters (AOTF) and Fabry-Pérot interferometers. The imaging capacity is an essential method to solve the major difficulty associated with the accurate determination of the tangent altitude of the sensed atmospheric region.
ALTIUS has presently completed its Phase B1, with a successful intermediate design review for the payload and a preliminary design review for the platform. The design will soon enter a consolidation phase. So far, the ALTIUS expected performance is fairly compliant with requirements for an operational ozone monitoring (with global stratospheric ozone monitoring as a target) mission and aims at several scientific objectives with expected retrievals of NO2, H2O, CH4 concentration profiles, aerosol extinction profiles and PSC/PMC detection.
The symposium aims at presenting the concepts and the objectives of ALTIUS, at summarizing the status of the mission developments and at triggering scientific collaboration to the project.
Primary author
Dr
Didier Fussen
(BIRA-IASB)
Co-authors
Christine Bingen
(BIRA-IASB)
Mr
Didier Pieroux
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Emmanuel Dekemper
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Ghislain Franssens
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Jan Thoemel
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Nina Mateshvili
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Philip Vanhellemont
(BIRA-IASB)
Mr
Philippe Demoulin
(BIRA-IASB)
Dr
Quentin Errera
(BIRA-IASB)
