TSIS

Total Solar Irradiance Sensor

Satellites

NPOESS 1 & 3

Status

Being developed - To be utilised in the period 2013 to ~ 2027

Mission

Total solar irradiance monitoring, and also spectral solar irradiance in UV/VIS/NIR/SWIR

Instrument type

Assemblage of 4 active cavity radiometers for total irradiance (TIM, range 0.2-10 µm), plus a prism spectrometer for spectral irradiance (SIM, range 0.2-2.0 mm, spectral resolution from 0.25 to 33 nm)

Scanning technique

Sun pointing during orbital movement, data sampled every 2 min

Coverage/cycle

One measurement after integration on all data taken during the diurnal orbit arc; thus 100 min

Resolution (s.s.p.)

N/A (sun pointing)

Resources

TIM: mass 7.9 kg, power 14 W, data rate 539 bps – SIM: mass 22 kg, power 25.3 W, data rate …... kbps