GLORIA-FTS
Hyperspectral sounding of the radiance emitted by the earth’s atmosphere in the mid-infrared range allows to derive information on atmospheric parameters like temperature, trace-gas concentrations, as well as information on aerosol and cloud. With the Gimbaled Limb Observer for Radiance Imager of the Atmosphere (GLORIA) instrument the first and only limb-viewing imaging Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) operated on board of high altitude research aircraft (HALO) to derive 2- and 3-D distribution of atmospheric parameters.
Remote sensing instruments that include imaging detectors typically generate raw data rates in the order of several 100 MByte/s. This represents an enormous challenge for the data acquisition and data processing.
GLORIA and the ballon version (GLORIA-B) has been developed and is operated jointly by the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In this project, we are responsible for the electronics design of this remote sensing instrument in cooperation with partner institutions (ICE-4, IPE-KIT and IMKASF-KIT). This type of remote sensing instrument combines an imaging detector with a Michelson interferometer resulting in an imaging FTS.
We developed a high-speed detector electronics, in combination with an interferometer electronics to acquire the atmospheric signals and control the interferometer in parallel during image rates of several thousand images per second. High-speed connections are used to transfer the scientific data to a custom-designed flight computer, which covers a database bandwidth of several 100 MB/s with a storage capacity of over 16 TByte of data to guarantee continuous measurements over 10-15 flight hours. The system is designed and certified for aviation applications.
Flight heritage and scientific campaigns
GLORIA has been operated on the German research aircraft HALO and on the high altitude aircraft Geophysica. The following missions have been performed so far:
- The ESSenCe (ESA Sounder Campaign) mission in Nov/Dec. 2011 from Kiruna, Sweden with Geophysica
- The combined TACTS/ESMVal (Transport And Composition in the UT/LMS - Earth System Model Validation) mission in Aug/Sept 2012 from Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany with HALO
- The combined POLSTRACC (Polar Stratosphere in a Changing Climate) , GW-LCYCLE (Gravity Wave Life Cycle Experiment) and SALSA (Seasonality of Air Mass Transport and Origin in the Lowermost Stratosphere) missions in Dec. 2015 - March 2016 from Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany and Kiruna, Sweden with HALO
- The STRATOCLIM (Stratospheric and upper tropospheric processes for better climate predictions) missions in Sept. 2016 from Kalamata, Greece and in July/August 2017 from Kathmandu, Nepal with Geophysica
- The WISE (Wave-driven Isentropic Exchange) mission in September/October 2017 from Shannon, Ireland with HALO
- The SouthTRAC campaign from September until November 2019 from Tierra del Fuego (Río Grande), Argentina with HALO
GLORIA-B, the balloon version of GLORIA, has been flown at altitudes of more than 35 km during two stratospheric balloon campaigns within the HEMERA Research Infrastructure funded by the Horizon 2020 framework Programme of the European Union:
- From Kiruna, Sweden in August 2021.
- From Timmins, Canada in August 2022.
Contact
- Institute of Technology and Engineering (ITE)
Room 220