Initial in-orbit results from a low-cost atmospheric ozone monitor operating on board the FASat-Bravo microsatellite

In 1994, a collaborative programme was set up between the University of Surrey and the Chilean Air Force to design and build a low-cost 50 kg microsatellite with instrumentation capable of monitoring the distribution and concentration of stratospheric ozone, particularly over Chilean territory. This resulted in the joint design and development of the ozone-layer monitoring experiment (OLME), which was flown on board the resultant FASat-Bravo microsatellite, launched in July 1998 into an 820 km altitude Sun-synchronous orbit. The nadir-pointing OLME measures the solar ultraviolet light backscattered from the atmosphere in four spectral bands. From these raw radiometric data, total column ozone concentrations can be deduced. Since the launch, a series of high-spatial-resolution measurements have been made over Chilean scientific stations, while continuous low-spatial-resolution measurements have been used to provide global coverage. To date, the University of Surrey has concentrated on these global measurements, and has used a simplified ozone retrieval algorithm to check the results qualitatively against ozone maps produced by NASA's Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) payload. These initial results look promising, with apparently good correlation between the two datasets. A novel, more-complex retrieval algorithm has been applied to the high-resolution data, and early results have shown agreement with the TOMS.