STATUS:
12.03.10
Spacecraft Status
The AIM spacecraft continues to function well. All subsystems are nominal. The next CIPS Southern Hemisphere Flat Fields are planned for December 23-26. We’re fast approaching another major milestone – on December 27th AIM will complete its 20,000th orbit!
Instrument Status
SOFIE continues to operate nominally. All status flags remain GREEN, and all engineering parameters are well within tolerance. No PMCs were observed by SOFIE during the month of November 2010.
Version 1.03 data has been released and data is available on the SOFIE website. The SOFIE team is analyzing the on-orbit full solar scan data in an effort to better characterize the FOV off axis wings. The newly characterized FOV functions will be implemented into the next software version. The team also trying to derive the best method for retrieving CO2 VMR profiles simultaneously with the temperature.
CIPS continues to operate nominally. As of December 2, 2010, we still have not seen any PMCs for the SH 2010 season. We obtained a set of calibration observations for this season in October, but did not achieve bitlock in time to get the November calibrations.
The new retrieval algorithm, v4.20, has been frozen and all data from prior seasons have now been processed. The operational data are now v4.20. Final vetting of all data products is in progress, and documentation is being prepared. The official release will occur later in December. The v4.20 level 3 (“daily daisy”) maps of PMCs are already available on the LASP web site (http://lasp.colorado.edu/aim/cips/data/index_level3.php).
One of the improvements in v4.20 is higher accuracy in cloud detections. The plots below show the CIPS daily frequency of cloud occurrence vs. latitude for all seasons thus far observed by AIM.
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