| Instrument: NAST-M : NPOESS Aircraft Sounder Testbed-Microwave Radiometer |
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Associated Platforms NASA ER-2 Related Data Sets View all records related to this instrument Description The new M.I.T. Microwave Temperature Sounder (MTS), which is designated NAST-M when flown as the microwave component of the NPOESS Aircraft Sounding Testbed, is a complete upgrade of the MTS instrument which has been flown by M.I.T. on NASA ER- 2 aircraft since 1988. (ref Gasiewski) This package consists of two radiometers: the first with eight single-sideband channels between 50 and 57 GHz and the second with nine double-sideband channels within 4 GHz of the 118.75 oxygen line. The instrument block diagram is shown in Figure 1. Channel passbands are listed in table 1. Both radiometers have scalar feedhorns with 7.5 0 3-dB beamwidths and a shared mirror scans pattern of 18 spots from -65 0 to +65 0 from nadir, two black-body calibration loads and a chimney-view of zenith during a nominal 6.5-second scan. This scan pattern provides abutting beams across track and beams also overlap along track at distances greater than 10 km from the aircraft at the ER-2's flight velocity of 210 m/s. Scan speeds can be adjusted to achieve other overlaps in beam coverage, but the nominal pattern has an integration time on the order of 100 ms per spot and yields data at a rate of less than 2 kB per second or 7.2 MB per hour. Additional information: http://cloud1.arc.nasa.gov/teflun/overview/instr/mts.desc.html [Text adapted from the NASA/ARC Home Page] Online Resources http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/index.php?pg=nast |
