TanSat
The first Chinese Carbon Dioxide Observation Satellite Mission (TanSat) was launched on December 21, 2016. It carries two instruments on-board: the Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide Grating Spectrometer (ACGS) and the multiple-band Cloud and Aerosol Polarization Imager (CAPI). TanSat flies in a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit (LEO) with an equator crossing time around 13:30 local time. The satellite operates in three measurement modes: nadir (ND), glint (GL) and target (TG). The swath width of TanSat measurements is ~18 km across the satellite track and contains 9 footprints each with a size of 2 km à 2 km in nadir. Nadir and glint mode alternate orbit-by-orbit, and the TanSat nadir model ground track is typically between two OCO-2 tracks, which provides potential future opportunities for combined usage of both data products for increased spatial coverage.