Ongoing projects
The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) is an high resolution Fourier Transform Spectrometer developed by ESA for the detection of limb emission spectra in the upper atmosphere.
MIPAS has been successfully launched on board Envisat-1, on 1st March 2002. It detects the atmospheric limb emission over a wide spectral interval in the middle infrared region.
Up to now MIPAS mission can be divided in 3 parts:
- measurements from June 2002 to March 2004
- measurements on August - September 2004
- measurements from January 2005 on
The characteristics of the instrument that are common to the different periods of measurements are summarised in the following table:
| Type |
Parameters |
| Pointing |
|
| Instantaneous Field of View | 3 x 30 km2 (height per width, at 10 km tangent altitude) |
| Elevation pointing | 5 ... 210 km (tangent altitude) |
Spectral |
|
| Spectral range |
685-970 cm-1, 1020-1170 cm-1, 1215-1500 cm-1, 1570-1750 cm-1, and 1820-2410 cm-1 |
Radiometric |
|
| Radiometric sensitivity NESR |
50, 40, 20, 6 and 4.2 nW/cm2/sr/cm-1, respectively for the above spectral ranges |
The characteristics distinguishing the measurements in the different periods are the spectral resolution and the # of spectra per standard elevation scan.
The measured middle infrared emission spectra contain features of most atmospheric constituents. Therefore, a series of spectra measured in the limb-scanning configuration can be processed to determine the volume mixing ratio profiles of numerous atmospheric trace species.
The retrieval of pressure and temperature, as well as the volume mixing ratio of six high priority species, namely O3, H2O, HNO3, CH4, N2O and NO2, are routinely performed in near real time.
Official Site: http://envisat.esa.int/instruments/mipas/
The retrieval of pressure and temperature, as well as the volume mixing ratio of six high priority species, namely O3, H2O, HNO3, CH4, N2O and NO2, are routinely performed in near real time.
Official Site: http://envisat.esa.int/instruments/mipas/
