Paul Newman:  The Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite or the OMPS instrument is a key component to measuring the health of the ozone layer.

It is an instrument that continues a series that began back in the 1970s.

And so we now have about 40 years of measurements of total ozone around the globe.

Stratospheric ozone screens harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Ozone will absorb these solar rays that are very energetic and in fact these rays are so energetic that they can break down biologically active molecules. For example they can damage DNA and this is the reason why excessive exposure to UV radiation can cause skin cancer. So a little bit of UV radiation does leak through, the most powerful does not because of the ozone layer. So you want to avoid excessive solar radiation so you don’t get sunburned. You do need a little bit of UV radiation to produce Vitamin D and that’s a useful thing of course you could also take Vitamin D in a pill, but the ozone layer is actually our natural sunscreen.

The great thing about NPP is that it’s continuing a long series of observations. The OMPS instrument is continuing the measurement of ozone, which has a long history form the 1970’s. 

The CERES instrument measuring the Earth’s radiation budget, the same thing, it’s critical for climate change. VIIRS and its measurements of the surface and clouds. These things are changing as our atmosphere changes and as our uses of the land, all these processes are changing as climate changes. CrIS, the instrument measurements of course, as things warm up, you get more IR radiation to space. As you put different gases into the atmosphere, gases increase the IR changes (2:42). And the microwave also. There are a lot of changes happening in our atmosphere. The NPP satellite will continue this series, it gives us real time information and it allows us to see how our atmosphere and the planet are changing.  

It is really amazing to realize what we can measure from space. We’ve measured invisible gas, ozone, we measure very tiny particles, dust, we measure sulfur dioxide, who’d of thought 50 years ago that we could make measurements like that, its amazing!

Scott Asbury: So it’s a continuous measurement that goes on as the satellite orbits the Earth in a polar orbit about every 2 to 3 days it will repeat its measurement over and over any portion of the Earth. And so that data will be delivered down from the satellite to the ground. Every time the satellite flies over a ground station, so multiple times per day.

Ozone data is a long term measurement its really meant to go to scientists who are looking at climate change effects to try to understand very long term what’s going on.  

Joan Howard: The OMPS instrument is built completely here at Ball Aerospace, built and tested here. Of course we get components from a variety of subcontractors, things that we don’t manufacture right here on site. But the design, the assembly, build and test was all done here in our Boulder facility at Ball Aerospace. 

Ultraviolet instruments in general are one of the most challenging instruments to develop for very specific reasons. It’s a wavelength that’s not commonly used in day-to-day life. For instance if it was a visible censor, well…focal planes are in your cell phone and in your camera. Very few people develop ultraviolet type of instruments. So, there are many challenges in designing and building an instrument of this complexity in this small of space.