The AIM spacecraft continues to operate nominally with the exception of the uplink receiver. Uplink receiver bitlock continues to occur only sporadically with a few minutes of bitlock every few days.
Instrument Status
The SOFIE turn-on and reset RTS's were modified to include multiple "use image" commands to mitigate the asynchronous FPGA issue. The RTS's have been compiled into command loads by the AIM MOC and are waiting in the upload queue for bitlock. The SOFIE instrument continues to perform nominally.
The V1.022 SOFIE data for 2008 and early 2009 has now been reviewed and has been released. The 2009 temperature data provides an excellent record of the stratospheric warming event that began in January. All data products continue to be of excellent quality.
SOFIE summary and CV files for the new V1.022 data were completed and posted online. Work continues on a paper describing the relationships between PMCs and
temperature and water vapor. A paper describing the SOFIE smoke results was submitted to Science.
CIPS was turned back on successfully at 3:30am MT on 9 February after the latest safe hold. Clouds were still visible in images after this turn-on, until 17 February. No clouds have been observed since 17 February; this is likely indicative of the approaching end-of-season. It should be noted, however, that this is only a qualitative, not quantitative, analysis that could be affected by uncertainties in preliminary background subtractions.
The “daily daisies” for the current version of the retrieval algorithm, v3.20, have been re-plotted for all seasons using a new approach that was developed to empirically remove background subtraction artifacts. These daisies have been evaluated, and the primary artifacts have been documented. All daisies for the SH 2008-2009 season have now been posted to the web site, along with documentation.
We are continuing to design systematic evaluation procedures that will be applied to all data levels, as well as the accompanying documentation. Preliminary evaluation of v3.20 levels 1a, 3, and 4, as well as CV data and “summary files” of level 4 data have been carried out. Results are promising, but more comprehensive evaluation and documentation is required before they are released.
CDE has returned to normal operations after the safehold events, and conducted a calibration on DOY 70.
New NASA eClips Video
Night Shining Clouds
NASA eClips
The clip features interview segments with Dr. James M. Russell, AIM's Principal Investigator.
See more on our Library's Video and YouTube Pages.
