OMI very fast delivery and the Sodankyla/spl uml/ Satellite Data Centre

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) operates onboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Observing System Aura satellite, which was launched in July 2004. Like its sister spacecraft Terra and Aqua, Aura's capabilities include direct broadcast (DB), i.e., the ability to broadcast data at the same time as they are being measured and stored in the spacecraft's memory for later transmission to Earth. The Finnish Meteorological Institute's Satellite Data Centre at Sodankyla/spl uml/ in Finnish Lapland is exploiting this capability to receive OMI data while Aura is in sight of the receiver, which enables nearly immediate production of OMI data products for a region that includes a large part of Europe, stretching from the North Pole to the Italian Alps. The current OMI Very Fast Delivery (VFD) products include maps of surface UV-B, ozone columns, and cloud coverage.