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Global atmospheric chemistry monitoring from space is a key to follow up air quality and provide the repeatable global coverage needed to explain the different mechanisms explaining global warming effects. Space observations with high revisit frequency allow following air mass and pollution clouds movements, both over continents and oceans. Whereas sounders like IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) on board MetOp satellite are mostly designed for meteorological applications, CNES started studying alternative concepts to dedicate new instruments to some selected molecular species. A patent released in 1998 by CNES [1] is at the basis of a static configuration of Michelson interferometers, sampling each interferogram at once. New perspectives to reduce existing instruments in terms of mass, volume and complexity and to create constellations of small satellites or micro-satellites were opened. CNES either proposed this concept for CO2 concentration monitoring (Carbosat and Minicarb missions) in the near infrared or CO and O3 atmospheric profiles retrieval (SIFTI instrument on TRAQ mission [2]) in the thermal infrared. Though TRAQ was finally not selected by ESA, a validation of this concept has been undertaken in parallel with SIFTI phase A studies with the development of a breadboard called MOPI (which stands for ‘Maquette Optique de Performances Infrarouges’ in French, approximately translated into ‘Optical Breadboard for Infrared Performances’). In this paper, we will first describe the instrumental concept. The second part will detail the different conception choices made to design MOPI and, finally, the third part will present the next steps awaited for this breadboard.
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