The EOS-Aura Mission

Abstract

The EOS-Aura atmospheric chemistry mission is scheduled for launch in June 2004. Aura is the third of the large EOS observatories. The spacecraft carries an international instrument payload that has a planned six year lifetime. The Aura mission will collect data to help answer stratospheric and tropospheric atmospheric chemistry questions. The mission has the following four major objectives: 1) Track the ozone layer to determine if it is recovering as predicted. The four Aura instruments, HIRDLS, OMI, MLS, and TES will measure ozone, key source, radical, reservoir, tracer gases, and aerosols. Aura's unique design allows for major ozone controlling gases to be measured within the same air mass within a few minutes. The OMI instrument will continue the trends from NASA's TOMS series. 2) Track tropospheric pollutant sources and measure tropospheric ozone precursors. Major pollution sources include urban, industrial and biomass burning regions. Tropospheric trace gases will be measured, using TES and OMI, at an average spatial resolution of about approx. 15 km with near global coverage. 3) Measure key upper tropospheric atmospheric constituents that influence climate. The Aura instruments will monitor O3, H2O, CO, cirrus ice, and aerosols. EOS-Aura will fly in a sun-synchronous polar orbit about 15 minutes behind Aqua and make near coincident and synergistic measurements with the EOS-Aqua, Cloudsat, OCO, PARASOL and Calipso missions. Aura launched July 15,2004.