In-flight performance and calibration of SPICAV SOIR onboard Venus Express

Arnaud Mahieux (1) , Sophie Berkenbosch (1) , Roland Clairquin (1) , Didier Fussen (1) , Nina Mateshvili (1) , Eddy Neefs (1) , Dennis Nevejans (1) , Bojan Ristic (1) , Ann Carine Vandaele (1) , Valérie Wilquet (1) , Denis Belyaev (2) , Anna Fedorova (2) , Oleg Korablev (2) , Eric Villard (3) , Franck Montmessin (3) , Jean-Loup Bertaux (3)

1 BIRA-IASB - Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy / Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
2 IKI - Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
3 SA - Service d'aéronomie

Solar occultation in the infrared, part of the Spectoscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Venus (SPICAV) instrument onboard Venus Express, combines an echelle grating spectrometer with an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF). It performs solar occultation measurements in the IR region at high spectral resolution. The wavelength range probed allows a detailed chemical inventory of Venus’s atmosphere above the cloud layer, highlighting the vertical distribution of gases. A general description of the instrument and its in-flight performance is given. Different calibrations and data corrections are investigated, in particular the dark current and thermal background, the nonlinearity and pixel-to-pixel variability of the detector, the sensitivity of the instrument, the AOTF properties, and the spectral calibration and resolution.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère

Arnaud Mahieux, Sophie Berkenbosch, Roland Clairquin, Didier Fussen, Nina Mateshvili, et al.. In-flight performance and calibration of SPICAV SOIR onboard Venus Express. Applied optics, 2008, 47 (13), pp.2252-2265. ⟨10.1364/AO.47.002252⟩. ⟨hal-00280973⟩