Recent Progress in transmitter instrumentation and performance simulation studies for the ASCENDS mission

Narasimha S Prasad, NASA Langley Research Center, narasimha.s.prasad@nasa.gov (Presenter)

The National Research Council’s (NRC) Decadal Survey (DS) of Earth Science and Applications from Space has identified the Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) as an important atmospheric science mission. The CO2 mixing ratio needs to be measured to a precision of 0.5 percent of background or better (slightly less than 2 ppm) at 100-km horizontal resolution overland and 200-km resolution over oceans. To meet this goal, the ASCENDS mission requires simultaneous laser remote sensing of CO2 and O2 in order to convert CO2 column number densities to average column CO2 mixing ratios (XCO2). As such, the CO2 column number density and the O2 column number density will be utilized to derive the average XCO2 column.

NASA Langley Research Center, working with its partners, is developing fiber laser architecture based intensity modulated CW laser absorption spectrometer for measuring XCO2. In support of this measurement, sensor technology for remote sensing of O2 in the 1.26-1.27-μm band for surface pressure measurements is being developed. In this paper, we will present recent progress made in the development of advanced transmitter modules for CO2 and O2 sensing. This will be followed by spectroscopic studies of candidate spectral lines as a function of atmospheric parameters such as altitude, temperature, and pressure to achieve <0.5% measurement accuracies will be discussed. Furthermore, the investigation of advanced pseudorandom noise (PN) coding scheme for cloud and aerosol discrimination will be reported.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Coupled Processes at Land-Atmosphere-Ocean Interfaces   (Mon 4:00 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Related Activity

Poster Location ID: 65