On Friday, 13 October 2017 the Dutch design TropOMI instrument was launched into an 800 km altitude orbit from Plesetsk, Russia. The instrument was switched on on 18 October. It works! Click here for a short movie of the launch and turn those woofers up :-)!
‘First light’ has arrived at the detectors (6 November 2017). TROPOMI’s CCD detectors are still quite warm, but the instrument nevertheless appears capable of recording light levels that at first glance seem to make geophysical sense. Now waiting for the coolers to start their heat transfer to outer space, and reduce that dark current in the detectors. So far, so good!
Picture of the Month: A still from the TropOMI (Sentinel-5P) liftoff on a Rockot from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 09:27 GMT (11:27 CEST) on 13 October 2017.
If you want to read more on ow TropOMI is doing in the so-called commissioning phase, check out this website: https://tropomi.wordpress.com. Some other first signs of success have been reported on Dutch Public News Outlets (NOS, click here).
For our plan on how to retrieve NO2 from TROPOMI, please click here.
Folkert Boersma's HOMEPAGE 