Odin turns its focus to the Earth's climate

Credit: Swedish Space Corporation

The space observatory can now devote all of its time to its second assignment - to observe the Earth's atmosphere.

Since its launch in February 2001, the Swedish satellite Odin has made a large number of astronomical observations (see for example "Odin finds elusive oxygen molecule" and "Odin detects water in comets"). New satellites will soon be launched to take over Odin's astronomical work. For that reason, Odin can now spend full-time on its second assignment - the Earth's atmosphere. Odin intensifies observations of, for example, the chemistry of ozone and clouds on the border to space, which are possible early indicators of climate change. Odin's results are now also made available to researchers from all across Europe as a result of the European Space Agency ESA buying data from Odin.

In connection to this, the whole international science team around Odin gathered at AlbaNova University Center on May 10 to summarize and to plan for the future - both when it comes to the further analysis of the six years of data from astronomical observations and the continuation of the climate observations.