DMSP/SSUSI Project

The first of five SSUSI (Special Sensor Ultraviolet Spectrographic Imager) sensors is now flying on the DMSP 5D3 (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) F16 satellite. Disk and limb observations are being made of auroral emission, dayglow, and nightglow from which a variety of space environmental data products are being produced (e.g., auroral boundaries, auroral energy inputs, and ionospheric parameters). The five copies of SSUSI are being provided by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of the Johns Hopkins University. Under contract from APL, CPI developed many of the key algorithms for producing the data products, has performed full orbit simulations of SSUSI raw data, and jointly with APL has designed, developed, and tested the operational ground data analysis software (GDAS) for ingesting the raw data and subsequent processing to produce the above referenced products. More details on the algorithm work may be found under Dayglow: Neutral Composition, Solar EUV, and Ionization and Aurora: Particle Precipitation, Ionization, and Neutral Composition. The first-principles models used in the algorithm work are AURIC (for dayglow modeling) and B3C (for auroral modeling). CPI publications addressing two key dayside data products are:

Strickland, D. J., J. S. Evans, and L. J. Paxton, Satellite remote sensing of thermospheric O/N₂ and solar EUV: 1. Theory, J. Geophys. Res., 100, 12,217, 1995.

Evans, J. S., D. J. Strickland, and R. E. Huffman, Satellite remote sensing of the thermospheric O/N₂ and solar EUV: 2. Data analysis, J. Geophys. Res., 100, 12,227, 1995.

Strickland, D. J., R. E. Daniell, Jr., R. R. Meier, and. J. L. Lean, E-layer variations during an X-class flare inferred from far untraviolet dayglow observations, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Ionospheric Effects Symposium, ed. J. M. Goodman, 2005.

Strickland, D. J., J. L. Lean, R. R. Meier, A. B. Christensen, L. J. Paxton, D. Morrison, J. D. Craven, R. L. Walterscheid, D. L. Judge, and D. McMullin, Solar EUV irradiance variability derived from the terrestrial dayglow, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L03801, doi:10.1029/2003GL018415, 2004.

Strickland, D. J., R. R. Meier, R. L. Walterscheid, A. B. Christensen, L. J. Paxton, D. Morrison, J. D. Craven, and G. Crowley, Quiet-time seasonal behavior of the thermosphere seen in the far ultraviolet dayglow, J. Geophys. Res., 109, A01302, doi:10.1029/2003JA010220, 2004.

For CPI's most recent contributions to the SSUSI program, go to DMSP/SSUSI Cal/Val.