SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research will supply essential hardware for the infrared module of TROPOMI, the instrument onboard the European environmental satellite Sentinel-5 precursor, which shall monitor air pollution in the troposphere and climate change on earth, for example. On 9 December 2010, SRON concluded an agreement with the British space company Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) to this effect. SRON will supply a specially developed combination of a prism and optical grating, which will be used in space for the first time, and the readout electronics for the advanced infrared detector. The space research institute is also responsible for testing and characterising the detector under space conditions.
In about 2014, the largely Dutch earth observation instruments OMI (onboard the NASA satellite EOS-AURA) and SCIAMACHY (onboard the ESA satellite Envisat) will have reached the end of their lifespans. Yet that does not mean an end to the prominent Dutch contribution to monitoring global air pollution and climate change. It is expected that a new Dutch Earth observation instrument will be launched into space at the end of 2014: TROPOMI, the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument. TROPOMI is the only scientific instrument onboard the Sentinel-5 precursor satellite, a preparatory mission in the wide-ranging earth observation programme GMES from ESA and the European Commission.

New technology
TROPOMI is a so-called imaging absorption spectrometer. The instrument owes its considerable sensitivity to two technological innovations in the SWIR module.
SRON and TNO started on the development of a special immersion grating more than five years ago. This work was made possible by the financial support of the Netherlands Space Office (NSO). The immersion grating is a silicon grating illuminated from the inside: a specially developed combination of a prism and an optical grating that separates the radiation captured according to its wavelength. Thanks to these immersed gratings a drastic reduction in the size of the spectrometer is possible: a factor of 40 compared to conventional gratings. Indeed with conventional gratings the instrument would have been impossible to realise, in view of its size.
In addition to the immersed gratings, the SWIR module also contains an advanced detector for shortwave infrared radiation (SWIR), which satisfies the most stringent requirements. SRON is developing special electronics to control this detector and read its output. This combination of detector and electronics is being fully characterised by SRON so that later during the mission it will be possible to properly interpret the scientific data received.
Experimental set-up

TROPOMI is a collaboration between KNMI, SRON, TNO and Dutch Space, on behalf of NSO. KNMI and SRON are responsible for the scientific management of the project. Dutch Space in Leiden is the principal contractor for the construction of the instrument. TROPOMI is funded in collaboration with ESA by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment