Overview

The UV spectrophotometer & UV night airglow colorometer were flown on a Russian military surveillance satellite Zenit-4, on September 13, 1964. This flight mission was designated the name Cosmos 45 . This mission also included other meteorological sensors to obtain data in support of the operational weather satellite development program. The objectives of the UV sensors were to measure the solar UV radiation reflected and scattered by the earth's atmosphere and to study the characteristics of atmospheric UV nightglow emissions. On September 18, 1964, after five days in orbit(as planned), the satellite re-entered the atmosphere and was successfully recovered.

 In 1965, similar flights were  made by the Zenit-4 satellite for Cosmos 65 and  Cosmos 92 missions, launched on April 17 and October 16, respectively, and were recovered after eight days in orbit.

The Instruments

The UV spectrophotmeter observations have been reported by Krasnopol'skiy (1966) and Iozenas et al.(1969). These measurements occurred at solar minimum of the sunspot cycle. Since there is not much variability in equatorial ozone, the equatorial UV atmospheric albedo observed during Cosmos 65 missions in 1965 compare very well with the values observed by Nimbus-4 BUV in 1970. The agreement is excellent at 300 nm (Heath et al. 1973).

The first successful Earth's nightglow satellite measurements (the Earth's emission coming from the atmosphere due to the gaseous chemical reaction  in  the 300-400 nm spectral region) were also made during the eight days of Cosmos mission in 1965 (Lebedinsky, 1965; and Barbier, 1999).

Data Products

Data Availability & Access

Contacts

Dr. Suraiya Ahmad

GES DISC  DAAC

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD 20771

e-mail: ahmad@daac.gsfc.nasa.gov

301-614-5284 (voice)

301-614-5268 (fax)

 

For information about or assistance in using any DAAC data, please contact

 

EOS Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC)

Code 610.2

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

e-mail: help@daac.gsfc.nasa.gov

301-614-5224 (voice)

301-614-5268 (fax)

References

Lededensky, A. I. et al. 1965: Space Research (in Russian), Nauka, Moscow, p77.

Krasnopol'skiy, V. A., 1966: The ultraviolet spectrum of solar radiation reflected by the terrestrial atmosphere and its use in determining the total content and vertical distribution of atmospheric ozone, Geomag. Aeron. , 6, 236-242.

Iozenas, V. A. et al., 1969: studies of the earth's ozonosphere from satellite, Izv. Atmos. Oceanic Phys., 77-82.

Iozenas, V. A. et al., 1969: An investigation of planetary ozone distribution from satellite measurements of ultraviolet spectra, Izv. Atmos. Oceanic Phys. 5, 219-233.

Heath, D. F., Mateer, C. L., and Kreuger, A. J., 1973:The Nimbus-4 BUV atmospheric Ozone experiment- Two Year's operation, Pure and Applied Geophysics, vol 106-108, 1238-1253.

Barbier, L. M., 1999: The Earth's NUV Nightglow, in 26th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, August 17-25.vol 5.