The Sentinel-5 instrument inherits directly from its predecessor TROPOMI which is a UV-VIS-NIR-SWIR spectrometer embarked as the single payload of the satellite/mission Sentinel-5 Precursor (or Sentinel-5P).

The Sentinel-5 instrument and TROPOMI are similar in their design, measurement principle and performances.

For a mission description, visit the Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI page.

As for Sentinel-5P, the Sentinel-5 mission continues a series of spectrometers measuring atmospheric properties since 1995:

• The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on ESA's ERS-2 satellite which operated between 1995 and 2011.
• GOME-2 on EUMETSAT's Met-OP-A satellite, launched in 2006, still in service). A second GOME-2 is operating since 2012 on MetOp-B satellite.
• SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY) on ESA's ENVISAT mission which operated between 2002 and 2012.
• Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) since 2004 on NASA's AURA spacecraft, still in service.

GOME, GOME-2, SCIAMACHY, OMI and TROPOMI are passive sun backscatter spectrometers. SCIAMACHY and GOME(-2) use a scanning concept and linear detector arrays whereas OMI and TROPOMI use a staring push-broom concept with two-dimension detector arrays. The staring push-broom concept measures all ground pixels in the swath simultaneously and allows improved spatial resolution. SCIAMACHY measurements cover almost the entire solar irradiance spectrum from UV to SWIR (240 to 2 400 nm) whereas GOME(-2) and OMI are scaled down in terms of wavelength range covering the UV-VIS-NIR range (270 – 790 nm) and the UV-VIS range (270-500 nm) respectively. The Main characteristics of these five heritage instruments are summarised in the table.