Spectrum Scientific, Inc. (SSI) of Irvine, CA has been presented with a plaque from NASA ‘In Recognition and Appreciation of Spectrum Scientific’s Outstanding and Dedicated Effort in Support of the OMPS Program’ in supplying high specification holographic diffraction gratings to Ball Aerospace for the Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite (OMPS) instruments for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellites System (JPSS) Polar Follow-on missions (JPSS-3 and JPSS-4). JPSS, which includes the NOAA/NASA Suomi-NPP satellite and the recently launched JPSS-1, represent significant technological and scientific advancement in severe weather prediction and environmental monitoring.
SSI’s proprietary blazing technique offers considerably less stray light when compared to conventional methods without impacting efficiency, allowing us to meet the challenging grating requirements for the OMPS instrumentation, which required both plane blazed holographic gratings and convex sinusoidal holographic gratings with ultra-low stray light and very high UV efficiency coupled with very tight tolerances. The gratings also had to be manufactured in a silicone free environment using SSI’s innovative silicone free replication process and ISO Class 7 clean room to avoid silicone and particulate contamination
OMPS tracks the health of the ozone layer and measures the ozone concentration in the atmosphere. The collection of data from OMPS contributes to fulfilling the U.S. treaty obligation to monitor the ozone depletion per the Montreal Protocol to ensure no gaps on ozone coverage, and extends more than three decades of total-ozone and ozone-profile records. OMPS products, when combined with cloud predictions, also help produce better ultraviolet index forecasts. In addition, OMPS data is used to measure atmospheric conditions, such as ash from volcanic eruptions, which are used in aircraft safety warnings.