NASA ATLAS Project

NASA's Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) instrument collected data during eight space shuttle missions from 1989 to 1996. The dataset provides ozone profiles of the upper atmosphere and total column ozone values, as well as solar spectral UV irradiance measurements between 200-405 nm. Data are available in ASCII text format for specific flight days spanning October 1989 to January 1996.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term ozone layer changes based on upper atmosphere profile data.
• Analyzing solar UV irradiance variations during solar cycle 22.
• Calibrating long-term sensitivity changes in other satellite instruments, such as NOAA-11 SBUV/2.
• Studying short-term solar UV activity evolution mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data covers eight distinct space shuttle missions over a 7-year period (1989-1996).
• Provides measurements at 19 pressure levels between 0.3 mb and 100 mb.
• Includes both ozone profile data and absolute solar UV irradiance data.

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA

Collection Method

Collected by the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) instrument on space shuttle missions.

Time Range

October 1989 to January 1996

Freshness

Data collection ended in 1996; this is a historical archive.

Geography

Global, with a 50 km x 50 km footprint at nadir.