The AURA validation campaigns at the Esrange Space Center are several balloon campaign with the objective to validate the instruments on board AURA, the latest satellite in the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) programme.

Up to now the following campaigns have been performed:
Aura Validation 2b in January-February 2007
AuraValidation 2 in January-February 2006 (no launch due to a weak polar vortex)
Aura Validation 1 in January-February 2005

The American satellite Aura (Latin for breeze) was launched on July 15 2004. The design life is five years with an operational goal of six years. The science on board Aura is focused on the chemical processes responsible for the ozone depletion in the stratosphere. Aura is designed to tackle three science questions:

1. Is the ozone layer recovering as expected?
2. What are the sources and processes that control tropospheric pollutants?
3. What is the quantitative impact of constituents on climate change?

Aura will answer these questions by globally measuring a comprehensive set of trace gases and aerosols at high vertical and horizontal resolution.