<title>Development and test of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS)</title>

Abstract

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) has been developed for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) program for a scheduled launch on the EOS PM-1 spacecraft in December 2000. AIRS, working in concert with complementary microwave instrumentation on EOS PM-1, is designed to provide both new and more accurate data about the atmosphere, land and oceans for application to climate studies and weather prediction. Among the important parameters to be derived from AIRS observations are atmospheric temperature profiles with an average accuracy of 1 K in 1 kilometer (km) layers in the troposphere, humidity profiles to 10% accuracy and surface temperatures with an average accuracy of 0.5 K. The AIRS measurement technique is based on passive IR remote sensing using a precisely calibrated grating spectrometer operating in the 3.7 - 15.4 micrometer region. The instrument concept uses a passively cooled array spectrometer approach in combination with advanced state of the art focal plan and cryogenic refrigerator technology to achieve high performance in a practical long life configuration. The AIRS instrument has successfully completed a comprehensive performance verification program conducted at the Lockheed Martin IR Imaging Systems (LMIRIS) AIRS Test and Calibration Facility (ATCF), which was specially designed for precise spectroradiometric testing of space instrumentation. This paper provides a brief overview of the AIRS mission and instrument design, ATCF test capabilities, along with key results.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.