b O 3 = {er, et, e h } is an orthogonal right-handed polar coordinate frame. er points always along the sun-spacecraft line, e h is the orbit plane normal (pointing along the spacecraft's orbital angular momentum vector), and et completes the right-handed coordinate system (er × et = e h). c See e.g. Ref. 3 pp. 38-39. d Note that one cos α results from the projection of the sail area onto er, whereas the other cos α results from the projection of the two SRP force components onto n.
Abstract. The Balloon Lidar Experiment (BOLIDE) was the first high-power lidar flown and operated successfully on board a balloon platform. As part of the PMC Turbo payload, the instrument acquired high-resolution backscatter profiles of polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) from an altitude of ∼ 38 km during its maiden ∼ 6 d flight from Esrange, Sweden, to northern Canada in July 2018. We describe the BOLIDE instrument and its development and report on the predicted and actual in-flight performance. Although the instrument suffered from excessively high background noise, we were able to detect PMCs with a volume backscatter coefficient as low as 0.6×10-10 m−1 sr−1 at a vertical resolution of 100 m and a time resolution of 30 s.
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