Nine years of atmospheric remote sensing with SCIAMACHY - instrument performance

SCIAMACHY on ENVISAT has meanwhile explored the Earth's atmosphere for more than 9 years. All subsystems perform well which is a precondition for maintaining a high optical and operational performance. Even the unavoidable in-orbit degradation due to the harsh space environment is lower than expected and can be largely compensated by sophisticated calibration and monitoring means. Because of the excellent status of both the platform and the instruments the ENVISAT mission has been extended until the end of 2013. Associated with this extension was a change of the orbit in late October 2010 and reconfiguring SCIAMACHY for achieving successful operations in the coming years.