TRAQ Performance Analysis and Requirements Consolidation for the Candidate Earth Explorer Mission TRAQ - Final Report

This is the final report of the ON TRAQ (Original and New TRopospheric composition and Air Quality
measurements) study. The key objective of this preface-A study was to support the scientific development of the
candidate Earth Explorer Mission TRAQ in parallel to the industrial phase 0 system study for the candidate
mission TRAQ.

This project further supported the TRAQ MAG and ESA for the prioritisation of the challenging mission requirements and has provided recommendations to update the Mission Requirement Document (MRD). The output of this study was not fully available for the Mission Assessment Report, written by the TRAQ MAG and ESA. However, initial results of the ON TRAQ project have highlighted the specific science benefits of the TRAQ mission and were used as input for the ESA Earth Explorer User Consultation Meeting (UCM) held in Lisbon on 20-21 January 2009.
This report presents the main conclusions and recommendations of the following three aspects that have addressed in this study:

- Quantitative analysis and consolidation of the mission requirements, as formulated in the TRAQ Mission Requirements Document, including Level 2 and Level 1b data.
- Assessment of the mission performance (Level 2 data).
- Development of an outline architecture and the main features of data analysis algorithms.
- Specific studies in support of the phase 0 industrial studies.
- Specific studies concerning the innovative aspects of this mission (precessing orbit, intelligent pointing for cloud free detection, UV/VIS/SWIR – TIR combined retrievals).