Developing of the space satellite-based polarimeter

The climate changes of the Earth are mainly caused by changes in the energy balance of the system Sun – Earth. To correctly model and forecast the deviations in concentration of the stratospheric ozone over Earth surface it’s necessary to obtain data on the physical characteristics of aerosol particles. Unfortunately, the available information on the subject is quite limited.
As the part of the ecological space mission the ultraviolet polarimeter is planned to be installed on the observing satellite that would work on the lower orbit. The main task of this device is the aerosol density monitoring in the top layer of atmosphere with the remote analysis of the gathered data on land.
The implementation of the planned experiment requires the development, creating and installation of the ultraviolet polarimeter onboard of the microsatellite platform. This device must be compact and lightweight and fully autonomous in the automatic mode. So, aside from the sensitive measuring parts the efficient control system need to be developed as well.
This ultraviolet polarimeter is a passive optoelectronic device that can remotely acquire polarimetrically sensed data. It is the one-point single-channel ultraviolet polarimeter with rotated polarizing element. The position of the polarization plane of the polarizing element managed by hardware and software aids according to the selected task. Therefore, the device control system must provide fully autonomous functioning for automatic data gathering.
The paper summarizes early state of the automatic UV polarimeter development which planned to be installed on the observing satellite which works on the low Earth orbit as the part of the ecological space mission.
There is an operating model of the compact on-board ultraviolet polarimeter to consider as the basic model for the carrying out of space experiment on the effects of stratospheric aerosols, changes in global and local climate of the Earth. The designed device allows its modification depending on the variety of the problems in setting such a complex space experiment.