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In the mid-1970's, scientists at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) of the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the Aeronomy Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder proposed a satellite mission to obtain information about the processes that create and destroy ozone in the Earth's mesosphere. Under the sponsorship of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and with the participation of Ball Aerospace Systems Division (BASD) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Solar Mesosphere Explorer (SME) was built and launched on October 6, 1981. Dr. Charles A. Barth was the Principal Investigator.
The mission continued for seven and a half years, and SME measured ultraviolet solar flux, ozone density, and the density of other molecules important to the understanding of ozone chemistry. During the mission over one hundered UCB undergraduate and graduate students were involved in nearly all aspects of SME operations including planning and scheduling spacecraft and science activities, controlling the spacecraft and its ground support system, and analyzing spacecraft subsystem performance.
The SME satellite was monitored and controlled from a Project Operations Control Center (POCC) located at LASP. It was the only satellite control center located at the university and run by students.
On April 14, 1989, contact was lost with the SME satellite, and on May 15, 1989, the SME mission was terminated.
The observatory module consists of five scientific instruments, a proton alarm, and a Winston cooling horn. The five scientific instruments include the 1.27 um (Airglow) spectrometer, the Visible (NO2) spectrometer, the Ultraviolet (Ozone) spectrometer, the Solar (UV) spectrometer and the Infrared Radiometer (IRR). Each instrument gathers data on one or more of the processes that form and destroy ozone and influence its distribution.
Besides the primary objective of the mission, the SME satellite was able to participate in several additional acitvities. The IRR instrument was able to collect unique and valuable data on the El Chichon eruption aerosol cloud. The satellite was used in the initial checkout of the NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) and the French CNES space network. SME data was used in correlation studies with several other research projects including rockets launched from Wallops Island, Virginia and Natal, Brazil, Convair 990 flights, Spacelab missions, Australian Wave studies, and the Antarctic Ozone Hole Expedition.
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