SAGE III/ISS Science Team Meeting Highlights Advancements in Aerosol Products and Strong Global Partnerships in Atmospheric Research
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) III on the International Space Station (ISS) ninth annual science team meeting was held August 19–20, 2026 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Approximately 60 scientists and engineers participated in the hybrid meeting, discussing the status of the mission, instrument operations, data processing, as well as […] The post SAGE…
The ninth annual science team meeting of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) on the International Space Station (ISS) took place from August 19–20, 2026 at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. Around 60 scientists and engineers gathered, both in person and virtually, to discuss the mission's progress, instrument operations, data processing, modeling, and scientific findings from SAGE III/ISS observations.
Researchers from U.S. universities, NASA Langley, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and NOAA laboratories, along with international participants from the University of Saskatchewan and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, attended the meeting. The gathering emphasized the mission's continued strong performance, including the anticipation of expedited product releases in CY26, enhancement of standard product quality in version 6.1 for CY27, and the development of a nighttime lunar occultation aerosol product to complement the solar aerosol product.
The meeting highlighted SAGE III/ISS measurements as a crucial anchor dataset for studying atmospheric composition and long-term trends in the upper troposphere and stratosphere. SAGE III/ISS particle-size information proves increasingly valuable for refining aerosol retrieval algorithms for OMPS-LP, OSIRIS, and other instruments, such as those on STRIVE, HAWC, and ALTIUS. Long-term, vertically resolved SAGE datasets are essential for detecting changes in ozone, water vapor, and aerosols.
Significant perturbation events, like the 2022 Hunga eruption and the 2020 Australian fires, serve as natural experiments for evaluating SAGE III/ISS science and data products by cross-validating with other measurements, including OMPS-LP, OSIRIS, CALIOP, MLS, balloon measurements, and ground-based networks. The meeting also stressed the importance of improved data processing, visualization, and user-access tools to maximize the scientific value and wider utilization of SAGE III/ISS observations.
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