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- The Solar Mesosphere Explorer (SME) mission objective was primarily to investigate the processes that create and destroy ozone in the Earth's mesosphere and upper stratosphere. Some specific goals were (1) to determine the nature and magnitude of changes in mesospheric ozone densities resulting from changes in the solar ultraviolet flux; (2) to determine the interrelationship between solar flux, ozone, and the temperature of the upper stratosphere and mesosphere; (3) to determine the interrelationship between ozone and water vapor; and (4) to determine the interrelationship between nitrogen dioxide and ozone. The satellite experiment complement consisted of a solar ultraviolet spectrometer, an ultraviolet ozone spectrometer, an infrared radiometer, a 1.27-micrometer spectrometer, and a nitrogen dioxide spectrometer. In addition, a solar proton alarm detector was carried on board to measure the integrated solar flux in the range 30 to 500 MeV. Spin stabilized at 5 rpm, the satellite moved in a 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. sun-synchronous orbit. The spacecraft body was a cylinder approximately 1.7 by 1.25 m and consisted of two major modules: the observatory module that housed the scientific instruments, and the spacecraft bus. The spin axis was oriented normal to the orbital plane. The command system was capable of executing commands in real time or from stored program control. Power was supplied by a solar cell array. The telemetry system was used either in a real-time or in a tape-recorder mode. Further details and some measurement results are written in C. A. Barth et al., 'Solar mesosphere explorer: scientific objectives and results,' Geophys. Res. Lett., v. 10, no. 4, p. 237, 1983. All instruments on board the SME were turned off in December 1988 because of energy considerations. - Auxiliary Information - Launch Date and Time : 1981-10-06 11:27:00 Epoch Date and Time : 1981-10-16 Apogee (km or AU): 551. Perigee (km or AU): 535. Inclination (degree) : 97.5 Orbit Type : Geocentric IDN_Node: USA/NASA Group: Platform_Details Entry_ID: SME Group: Platform_Identification Platform_Category: Earth Observation Satellites Short_Name: SME Long_Name: Solar Mesospheric Explorer End_Group Group: Synonymous_Platform_Names Short_Name: SME End_Group Group: Orbit Orbit_Inclination: 97.5 Perigee: 535 Apogee: 551 End_Group Creation_Date: 2007-11-28 Online_Resource: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sme/ Sample_Image: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sme/gifs/sme.gif Group: Platform_Logistics Launch_Date: 1981-09-06 Launch_Site: Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center, USA Primary_Sponsor: NASA End_Group End_Group
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