The WIND Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) demonstrated a new method of upper atmospheric wind measurement, using airglow as a target emission, in which the phase shifts observed in a Doppler Michelson Interferometer were used to deduce the wind velocity. By employing five different airglow emissions the global wind pattern was observed over an altitude range of 80 to 300 km from 1991 to 2003 on NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). The interferometer was set to a single optical path difference which made it simple in principle to implement field widening (small variations in phase over the field), allowing the imaging of winds. There were two major practical challenges, however; the first was the combined achromatization of the field‐widening condition to cover the different emissions viewed combined with the thermal stabilization of the instrument against phase drift. The second was the fabrication of the interferometer as a solid (monolithic) unit to make it sufficiently rugged for space flight. WINDII had two fields of view, one at 45° from the spacecraft velocity vector, the other at 135°, viewing at the Earth's limb, in order to measure the vector horizontal winds. The instrument design, fabrication, characterization, operations, in‐flight calibration are described and scientific results are presented.
Wind Imaging Interferometer on NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite
Optical Payloads for Space Missions ; 391-421
2015-12-10
30 pages
Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
The upper atmosphere research satellite
AIAA | 1984
|Multipayload Modeling for the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite
Online Contents | 1996
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