Abstract
The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer mission (EarthCARE) Multispectral Imager (MSI) is a radiometric instrument designed to provide the imaging of the atmospheric cloud cover and the cloud top surface temperature from a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit. The MSI forms part of a suite of four instruments destined to support the European Space Agency Living Planet mission on-board the EarthCARE satellite payload to be launched in 2016, whose synergy will be used to construct three-dimensional scenes, textures, and temperatures of atmospheric clouds and aerosols. The MSI instrument contains seven channels: four solar channels to measure visible and short-wave infrared wavelengths, and three channels to measure infrared thermal emission. In this paper, we describe the optical layout of the infrared instrument channels, thin-film multilayer designs, the coating deposition method, and the spectral system throughput for the bandpass interference filters, dichroic beam splitters, lenses, and mirror coatings to discriminate wavelengths at 8.8, 10.8, and 12.0μm. The rationale for the selection of thin-film materials, spectral measurement technique, and environmental testing performance are also presented.
Highlights
The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer mission (EarthCARE) [1] is a spaceflight instrument approved for the third Earth Explorer Core Mission in the Earth Observation Envelope Programme to quantify aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions for climate and numerical weather forecasting models
This is a major mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with a heritage of weather and climate satellite-borne instruments [2] to cover primary research objectives set out in the Living Planet Programme
EarthCARE is a cooperative mission between the ESA who are responsible for the entire
Summary
The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer mission (EarthCARE) [1] is a spaceflight instrument approved for the third Earth Explorer Core Mission in the Earth Observation Envelope Programme to quantify aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions for climate and numerical weather forecasting models. This is a major mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with a heritage of weather and climate satellite-borne instruments [2] to cover primary research objectives set out in the Living Planet Programme. The University of Reading was responsible for the spectral design, fabrication, and testing of the thermal infrared (TIR) optical coatings for the integrated bandpass filter, dichroic, and mirror focal plane assembly
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