Introduction

MAS is part of NASA's Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS) Spacelab shuttle mission and provides a database for the study of changes in the middle atmosphere. MAS is a remote sensing instrument for passive sounding of the Earth's atmosphere, designed to study the formation and destruction of ozone by measuring emission lines of ozone, water vapor, and chlorine monoxide from the space shuttle. The millimeter-wave radiation emitted by the atmosphere in the altitude range between 10 km and 100 km has been measured at 61, 62, 63, 183, 184 and 204 GHz. MAS yields information about the altitude profiles of temperature and pressure, as well as profiles for water vapour, ozone and chlorine monoxide in the stratosphere and mesosphere, in the latitude range between +/-72 degrees for a shuttle orbit inclination of 57 degree. Chlorine monoxide plays a major role in catalytic, anthropogenic ozone destruction.

MAS flew first in 1992 on the ATLAS 1 mission (March 24th - April 2nd) and had a second flight on ATLAS 2 in 1993 (April 8th - April 17th). During its third flight 1994 (November 3rd - November 14th) MAS had a failure in its data processing unit after 10 hours of taking data.

Contact

If you would like to have more informations about the MAS data, please contact wdc@dlr.de.