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13 October 2010Recent results from the superconducting submillimeter-wave limb-emission sounder (SMILES) onboard ISS/JEM
The Superconducting submillimeter-wave limb-emission sounder (SMILES) employs superconducting detectors
mechanically cooled down to ~4K, and it is extremely sensitive (Tsys < 400K), for the weak emission from trace species
of stratosphere and mesosphere, such as O3, HCl, HNO3, ClO, HO2, and BrO. SMILES was launched onboard HTV
spacecraft by using H-IIB launcher and started atmospheric observation in autumn of 2009. Using 2 bands among 3
bands in the 625 and 650 GHz submillimeter region, SMILES has been observing precise spectra with ~1K noise. Level-
2 (L2) data processing is on going at ISAS/JAXA in semi-real time basis. O3, HCl, HNO3 and ClO have strong emission
signal in the SMILES frequency coverage and we already found that SMILES L2 data is comparable or even better than
the existing best satellite observation of the atmosphere. HO2 and BrO have been retrieved with single scan data
successfully and the results are under verification. Since SMILES observation is much better than any previous
observation, validation of SMILES L2 data will be challenging. This paper describes L2 processing at ISAS/JAXA and
early results of SMILES.