Instruments

The Dutch Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) is flying onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5p mission, launched in 2017. Every day it scans the entire globe for e.g. methane and carbon monoxide concentrations at city-scale level.

SPEXone is a compact five-angle spectropolarimeter instrument developed as a contributed payload for the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) observatory. Launch is scheduled for early 2024. SPEXone will enable detailed characterization of aerosols, such as their absorption power, composition, size and height. It uses spectral modulation to provide measurements of radiance and state of polarization in a continuous wavelength spectrum, leading to a high polarimetric accuracy.

SPEXone is a small multi-angle spectropolarimeter for the quantification of atmospheric aerosol. It provides a light-path correction for CO₂ quantification. It is a candidate instrument for the two ESA’s CO2M satellites to be launched in 2026.

The Twin Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Observers (TANGO) comprises two cubesats: TANGO-Carbon and TANGO-Nitro. It is a candidate mission of ESA’s SCOUT program to be launched in 2026.

SPEX airborne is a prototype of SPEXone, a spectropolarimeter that is part of the payload for NASA’s PACE mission and a candidate to be part of ESA’s CO2M mission. SPEX airborne has flown onboard high altitude research aircrafts. In the near future SPEX airborne will be deployed in the validation campaign for PACE.