The rapid change of our planet’s atmosphere requires a frequent and precise monitoring of the Earth’s radiative budget. The ASTERIX mission responds to this challenge by measuring several atmospheric parameters (temperature, OH layer altitude, aerosols, TEC) with the MARTIC and NIGHTCAP 1U payloads. This first satellite paves the way to a constellation that will further provide a fine spatiotemporal coverage of these measurements [1].
The MARTIC camera is designed to measure the evolution of the Earth’s limb temperature profile from 30 to 90 km of altitude during its flight. The Engineering Model (EM) of MARTIC, optically designed by ONERA and built by LATMOS, is already available for laboratory tests.
The NIGHTCAP camera is designed to observe the "Nightglow" radiation emitted by the OH layer located around 87 km of altitude. The EM of NIGHTCAP, fully developed by ONERA, is currently manufactured at Winlight System facilities, and soon be assembled at ONERA.
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| Left, schematic setup for limb viewing from space (courtesy LATMOS) – Right, view of Nightglow emission layer from the ISS (courtesy NASA) | ||
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| Left, photography of MARTIC EM (courtesy M. Meftah and P. Keckhut) – Right, CAD view of NIGHTCAP EM | ||
[1] Keckhut P. et al., Middle-Atmosphere Temperature Monitoring Addressed with a Constellation of Cube-Sats dedicated to Climate issues, AMS Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, February 2021