CRISTA Introduction

F. Olschewski
last updated: 07. 03. 2007

CRISTA ( CRyogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere) is
a limb-scanning satellite experiment, designed and developed by the University of Wuppertal to measure infrared emissions of the earth's atmosphere.

Equipped with three telescopes and four spectrometers and cooled with liquid helium, CRISTA acquires global 3D-maps of temperature and atmospheric trace gases with very high horizontal and vertical resolution. The design enables the observation of small scale dynamical structures in the 10-150 km altitude region.

CRISTA is mounted on the free-flying ASTRO-SPAS satellite by DaimlerChrysler Aerospace which is then named CRISTA- SPAS, together with MAHRSI, an ultraviolet spectrograph from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.

The CRISTA-SPAS platform was launched with the U.S. Space Shuttle in 1994 and 1997. In orbit it was released from the cargo bay by the manipulator arm and retrieved at the end of the mission.

CRISTA-SPAS has successfully completed two missions:

CRISTA 1 was launched on November 3, 1994 with STS-66 Atlantis.
On November 12 the satellite was retrieved and two days later returned to Earth. The STS-66 payload also included the SSBUV experiment and the ATLAS-3 instrument package.

CRISTA 2 was launched on August 7, 1997 with STS-85 Discovery.
The Space Shuttle landed on August 19, 11:08 UT at NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The CRISTA/MAHRSI GBR Campaign encompasses the mission and complements it with ground truth and other coordinated measurements including monitoring of the atmospheric background by ground-based, aircraft, balloon, rocket and satellite experiments.
The first campaign took place October 27 - November 25, 1994 and included over 32 rockets,
56 balloons, and ground based experiments at 42 locations.
The second CRISTA/MAHRSI Campaign was from July 31 until August 30, 1997.
Details about campaign participants and experiments are described in the Campaign Handbook.

CRISTA's prime scientific objective is the study of small-scale dynamical structures seen in the global trace gas distributions. The data are also used to test 3-D chemical-dynamic model predictions.

More information on the experiments and scientific results can be found in the Publications section.