Today we are celebrating 50 years of launching scientific instruments into space! On this day 50 years ago, @OxfordAOPP's first space instrument, an infrared radiometer measuring atmospheric temperatures, was launched into space on NASA's Nimbus 4 orbiter.

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This first space instrument, the Selective Chopper Radiometer, measured atmospheric temperatures from 0 - 25 km altitude. You can read its first results here in a 1970 Nature paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/228139a0

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In the last 50 years @OxfordAOPP have launched many scientific instruments into space, observing Earth and other planets. Many of these have been infrared radiometers and spectrometers, but we've also sent weather stations and seismometers to Mars.
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Some highlights include:
1970: Pioneer Venus Orbiter Infrared Radiometer - developed jointly with NASA/JPL
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1991: The Improved Stratosphere and Mesosphere Sounder (ISAMS), launches on NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite.

1991: The Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) was launched on ESA's ERS-1 satellite. Designed for accurate measurement of sea surface temperature by using two viewing directions, it led to a line of operational instruments https://atsrsensors.org/ 
http://eodg.atm.ox.ac.uk/eodg/instrumen …
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1997: The NASA/ESA Cassini/Huygens mission launches from Cape Canveral. The Cassini Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) includes focal plane assembly and cooler from Oxford. It would observe the Saturnian system until 2017...
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2005: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) carries the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) infrared radiometer, which maps atmospheric temperatures, dust and water. It's now been observing Mars for well over a decade...
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2009: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) carries a familiar-looking Diviner radiometer, looking for the thermal inertia signatures of water ice in the moons' polar regions.
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2014: not forgetting the Earth: Oxford's innovative Compact Modular Sounder launches onboard the British TechDemoSat-1 satellite, paving the way to a new wave of cubesat-sized instrumentation.
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... read more about that here: https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/blog/astro-blog/2014/06/13/a-small-satellite-with-big-plans-techdemosat-1
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2018: Launch of Mars InSight, carrying micromachined seismometers to Mars developed by @imperialcollege with @OxfordAOPP, @RAL_Space_STFC and @BristolUni. These have detected hundreds of quakes. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-02-25-400-marsquakes-detected-uk-sensors-one-year

... so, concluding this thread, we look forward to the next 50 years in space and all the scientific insights that they will bring!


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