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ALTIUS will monitor the distribution and evolution of stratospheric ozone at high vertical resolution in support of operational services and long term trend monitoring. It will provide detailed stratospheric profile information at high vertical resolution, which is a valuable addition to ozone total column for data assimilation systems based on nadir sounders used by operational centers. In addition, some secondary scientific mission objectives are targeted, including measurements of vertical concentration profiles of other atmospheric species. The ALTIUS Mission was first proposed by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy and, after several studies in different programmes within ESA, is now being developed as an element of ESA’s Earth Watch Programme currently with the participation of Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg and Romania. The ALTIUS Mission concept consists of three spectral imagers flying at an altitude of approximately 700 km Sun- Synchronous Orbit on-board the next generation of PROBA platform. The ALTIUS Instrument shall allow observation of the Earth’s atmospheric bright limb in an extended spectral region from the Ultraviolet to the Short Wave Infrared (SWIR). In addition, the ALTIUS instrument shall perform solar and stellar occultation observations in the dark limb. The ALTIUS Instrument three hyperspectral channels are based respectively on Acousto-Optic Tuneable Filters (AOTFs) in the Visible (440-800nm) and SWIR (900-1800nm) range, and a cascade of Fabry Perot Interferometers (FPI) in the UV (250-370nm). The use of tuneable active spectral filter shall allow the ALTIUS Instrument to perform observations with a spectral resolution ranging between 1nm and 10nm in an extremely versatile operational concept. The use of the AOTFs and Fabry Perot technologies constitutes a novelty in the limb sounding missions and its development critical aspects as well as its performances have been proven in the frame of an extensive Instrument predevelopment phase. In this phase the critical technologies necessary to ensure the performance and functionalities of the ALTIUS Instrument have been designed, developed and qualified. In particular the following pre-developments were undertaken to pave the way towards Instrument Preliminary Design Review:
This paper presents the status and main results of the above-mentioned ALTIUS Instrument pre-development activities. In particular: major outcomes during the development process, achieved performances and lessons learned for the continuation of the ALTIUS Instrument flight model design are being highlighted. |
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