Abstract
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) on the International Space Station (ISS) is widely accepted as a stable source for high-quality stratospheric ozone, aerosol, and water vapor measurements since it was installed on the ISS in 2017. The ISS is a unique platform that provides access for hosted payloads while furnishing infrastructure for power, uplink, downlink, etc. for instrument operations. The opportunities, risks, and challenges from operating on the ISS are described in addition to comprehensive lessons learned. In addition, SAGE IV is presented as an option for the future of the SAGE lineage where the lessons learned from SAGE III and technological advances have enabled the instrument to fit into a 6U CubeSat yielding a significantly smaller and cheaper form-factor to preserve the continuity of critical atmospheric measurements.
Highlights
Introduction to SAGE InstrumentsGas Experiment (SAGE) fromThe SAGE missions are a series of remote sensing instruments deployed in Low-EarthOrbit (LEO) with the intent of observing key atmospheric constituents, in particular aerosol, ozone, and water vapor
Dedicated team of Information Technology (IT) system administrators is advantageous because they understand the latest security concerns and system vulnerabilities and are able to dedicate their time to keeping the systems updated and running
Every spaceborne platform comes with challenges; future payloads can utilize the lessons learned from prior experiments, such as those presented from
Summary
The SAGE missions are a series of remote sensing instruments deployed in Low-Earth. Orbit (LEO) with the intent of observing key atmospheric constituents, in particular aerosol, ozone, and water vapor. SAGE I [1,2], operational between 1979 and 1981, successfully used the technique of solar occultation (i.e., using the Sun as a light source through long atmospheric path lengths to measure weakly absorbing/scattering species) to make some of the first vertically resolved measurements of stratospheric aerosol and ozone These measurements contributed to the earliest assessments of the impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer [3] and the passing of the Montreal Protocol to phase out, and eventually ban, the use of these substances. Over the past few years, SAGE III/ISS has demonstrated an ability to provide highquality measurements of stratospheric ozone [9], aerosol [10], and water vapor [11,12] These atmospheric species are of particular importance. While the SAGE III mission is in extended operation, it is important to think about what instruments can be deployed in the future to ensure proper continuity of these critical data records
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