The main task of the project group IFB is the development of imaging Fourier spectrometers for remote sensing of atmospheric parameters. The spectrometers shall be carried by research aircraft and by stratospheric balloons.
The current project is the aircraft instrument GLORIA. The maiden flight was in November 2011 on board the Russian research aircraft M55 Geophysica. This first mission on the German research aircraft HALO (http://www.halo.dlr.de/) took place in August and September 2012. Both missions were succesful. The instrument collected roughly 30 TB data. Currently GLORIA is being prepared for the next missions.
GLORIA is a common project with Research Center Jülich.
The most important concrete tasks of the IFB group in this project are the development of the instrument concept, the design of the interferometer, of the line of sight stabilisation and of the control software. Expertise in the fields of optics, interferometry and thermal design as well as e.g. in the field of inertial navigation is needed here.
Another focus of activities of the group is the characterisation and modelling of the spectrometric and radiometric performance of imaging spectrometers and the development of algorithms and software to evaluate and exploit the data generated by the instruments. In this field the group closely cooperates with space agencies and space industry to advance the use of IFTS from space.
