ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Science Ground Segment (SGS)

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Science Ground Segment (SGS), comprised of payload Instrument Team, ESA and Russian operational centres, is responsible for planning the science operations of the TGO mission and for the generation and archiving of the scientific data products to levels meeting the scientific aims and criteria specified by the ESA Project Scientist as advised by the Science Working Team (SWT). The ExoMars SGS builds extensively upon tools and experience acquired through earlier ESA planetary missions like Mars and Venus Express, and Rosetta, but also is breaking ground in various respects toward the science operations of future missions like BepiColombo or JUICE. A productive interaction with the Russian partners in the mission facilitates broad and effective collaboration. This paper describes the global organisation and operation of the SGS, with reference to its principal systems, interfaces and operational processes.     

Tomographic determination of the spatial distribution of water vapor using GPS observations

With the advent of the GPS navigation system, a promising ground based technique has been introduced which makes it possible to estimate the amount of water vapor in the troposphere from operational GPS networks at relatively low additional costs. While the estimation of the integrated amount is currently well established, the determination of the spatial water vapor distribution and its temporal variation are still a major challenge. To account for the vertical resolution, several tomographic approaches were pursued. We developed the software package AWATOS (atmospheric water vapor tomography software) which is based on the assimilation of double differenced GPS observations. Applying a least-squares inversion, the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of water vapor is determined. An extensive investigation has been carried out in Switzerland. GPS measurements are performed by the dense permanent Swiss national GPS network AGNES of the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo). A total of 40 equally distributed water vapor profiles have been estimated on an hourly basis. For the purpose of validation, 22 radiosonde profiles were used at the GPS and meteorological station Payerne. Furthermore, data of the numerical weather model aLMo (alpine model in Switzerland, MeteoSwiss) were compared with the tomographic results. An overall good agreement of the three methods with an rms of better than 1.6 g/m³ absolute humidity was achieved. The results show that AGNES can be used as a dedicated network for the purpose of GPS-tomography, using a horizontal resolution of approximately 50 km and height layers of 300–500 m thickness in the lower troposphere.