ARYELLE 150 Spectrometer on ESA-NASA Mission

LTB’s smallest high-resolution echelle spectrometer, the ARYELLE 150, will be aboard NASA’s Douglas DC-8 aircraft on February 27, 2015. The goal of this mission is to observe the re-entry of the ESA cargo spacecraft ATV-5 “Georges Lemaître,” which is loaded with waste from the International Space Station (ISS), into the Earth’s atmosphere before it burns up over the South Pacific. The international research team hopes to gain detailed insights into the physical process of the flat, uncontrolled re-entry through a series of different measurements.

The ARYELLE 150 spectrometer is a key component of the SLIT/FIPS measurement instruments used by scientists Dr. Stefan Löhle and Thomas Marynowski from the “Diagnostics of High-Enthalpy Flows” research group at the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart. The researchers will use the ARYELLE 150 during the observation of the ATV-5 re-entry for spectral measurements of UV emissions (SLIT) and Doppler broadening of aluminum emissions (FIPS).

The countdown, from the preparation phases to the mission’s launch on February 27, 2015, can be followed live on the project’s website http://atv5.seti.org/