The flight of SAGE III on ISS

The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE)-III, an EOS instrument, will fly on three platforms beginning in 1999 with a flight aboard the Russian METEOR 3M spacecraft in a sunsynchronous orbit. SAGE III utilizes the occultation technique, both solar and lunar, to provide high resolution profiles of a number of species including ozone, water vapor, aerosol, and temperature. It is especially capable of measuring long term global change in these species. The METEOR 3M orbit yields polar measurements primarily and, therefore, a spacecraft in a mid-to-high inclination is needed to yield near-global coverage. The International Space Station (ISS) orbit inclination of 51.6° provides this additional coverage and SAGE III is scheduled to fly on ISS in 2002. The third SAGE III instrument will be flown in a future flight of opportunity having a high inclination orbit to replace and complement the METEOR 3M coverage. This paper will describe these SAGE III missions, with emphasis on the ISS flight including ...