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Panchromatic Fourier Transform Spectrometer (Pan-FTS) is an Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) funded development to build and demonstrate a single instrument capable of meeting or exceeding the requirements of the Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission. Pan-FTS has recently started operation at Mt. Wilson, CA, providing atmospheric measurement capabilities in the IR and UV-VIS. The currently deployed instrument includes two Focal Plane Arrays (FPA): a Raytheon IR FPA and a JPL developed UV-VIS FPA. This paper discusses the major electronic and software components of the instrument's FPGA-based command and data handling (C&DH) system. Progress made in the last year is discussed, with emphasis on the overall system architecture, FPA data acquisition, sigma-delta filter design, and optical path-difference mechanism (OPDM) control. Spectra recorded with single element detectors by PanFTS at Mt. Wilson are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Geostationary Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GeoFTS) is an imaging spectrometer designed for an earth science mission to measure key atmospheric trace gases and process tracers related to climate change and human activity. The GeoFTS instrument is a half meter cube size instrument designed to operate in geostationary orbit as a secondary “hosted” payload on a commercial geostationary satellite mission. The advantage of GEO is the ability to continuously stare at a region of the earth, enabling frequent sampling to capture the diurnal variability of biogenic fluxes and anthropogenic emissions from city to continental scales. The science goal is to obtain a process-based understanding of the carbon cycle from simultaneous high spatial resolution measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO), and chlorophyll fluorescence (CF) many times per day in the near infrared spectral region to capture their spatial and temporal variations on diurnal, synoptic, seasonal and interannual time scales. The GeoFTS instrument is based on a Michelson interferometer design with a number of advanced features incorporated. Two of the most important advanced features are the focal plane arrays and the optical path difference mechanism. A breadboard GeoFTS instrument has demonstrated functionality for simultaneous measurements in the visible and IR in the laboratory and subsequently in the field at the California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (CLARS) observatory on Mt. Wilson overlooking the Los Angeles basin. A GeoFTS engineering model instrument is being developed which will make simultaneous visible and IR measurements under space flight like environmental conditions (thermal-vacuum at 180 K). This will demonstrate critical instrument capabilities such as optical alignment stability, interferometer modulation efficiency, and high throughput FPA signal processing. This will reduce flight instrument development risk and show that the GeoFTS design is mature and flight ready. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]