The Balloon-borne MIPAS is an advanced Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) spectrometer specially tailored to the operation on a stratospheric balloon gondola. Equipped with suitable subsystems, MIPAS-B allows precise limb emission sounding of chemical constituents related to the stratospheric ozone problem and to the greenhouse effect.

This method is appropriate to obtain vertical profiles of ozone and considerable number of key radicals, reservoir species and source gases simultaneously, with an altitude resolution of 2 or 3 km. MIPAS-B is the only balloon borne cryogenic FTIR sensor in operation worldwide.

MIPAS has flown since 1989 and the scientific team is planning to continue for many years. Since the start MIPAS has flown 16 times from the Esrange Space Center. The three latest flights are described below:

2001-01-11
The MIPAS gondola was successfully launched today at 12.02 UTC. The ceiling of 28,6 km was reached after 1 hour and 45 minutes and measurements of gaze phase properties wear performed until the cut down. The gondola flew over Finland, into Russia and was taken down at 16.38 UTC. The campaign is coordinated with the PSC campaign and starts up again in November and goes on until Mars 2002.

2002-02-12
The launch of MIPAS took place at 11.56 UTC under good weather conditions. The payload is now measuring at an altitude of about 32 km and will bee taken down after about 4 h. The landing will take place in Russia.

2002-12-07
Another launch of the MIPAS payload took place at 02:39 UTC. The 150 000m³ balloon reached an altitude of 32 km and flow for about 7 hours and landed in Russia south west of the town Murmansk.

At the same time two flights with the OLEX lidar onboard the german Falcon aircraft from DLR took place. With these flights, partly the same air masses were covered as with the balloon-measurements. These flights went further north and west to get a wider overview of the PSC situation.

Contact persons:
Mr F. Friedl-Vallon, Forschungs Zentrum Karlsruhe, Project manager