TOMS-EP

Description

The goal of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Earth Probe mission (part of NASA's Mission To Planet Earth (MTPE) Phase I program) was to continue the high-resolution global mapping of total ozone on a daily basis (begun with the Nimbus 7 SBUV/TOMS) as well as to detect global ozone trends to verify depletion predicted by atmospheric chemistry models.

The TOMS-Earth Probe (TOMS-EP), the first of a series of NASA Earth Probe missions, was one of three TOMS missions which included METEOR 3/TOMS2 (launched 1991) and ADEOS/TOMS (launched 1995). The TOMS-EP carried only one instrument: the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS).

The TOMS-EP spacecraft was based on the TRW/DSI Eagle bus developed under the USAF STEP program. The spacecraft was three-axis stabilized so that the TOMS instrument was nadir-pointed with about 0.5 degree control and about 0.1 degree knowledge from measured altitude data. The TOMS-EP spacecraft bus was designed to accomodate all of the TOMS instrument requirements to support a two-year lifetime with a three-year lifetime goal.