Abstract

The Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer (ILAS)^[1,2] is a grating spectrometer designed to measure vertical profiles of high latitude stratospheric constituents in a solar occultation mode (see Fig.1). ILAS will be installed on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS), which is developed by National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and is scheduled to be launched in 1995. ADEOS has a sun-synchronous subrecurrent polar orbit at an altitude of 800 km with a 98.6 degree inclination. The equatorial crossing local time at descending node is currently planned to be in the period of 10:15 ~ 10:45 a.m. The recurrent period is 41 days and the design life time is 3 years. The latitude coverage of the ILAS occultation events for this particular orbit is shown in Fig. 2. The ILAS measurements are designed for the study of polar stratospheric chemistry.

© 1991 Optical Society of America