g3blspb_53 is the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) on the International Space Station (ISS) (SAGE III/ISS) Level 2 Lunar Event Species Profiles (Native) V053 data product. It contains all the species products for a single lunar event. Launched on February 19, 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS), the second instrument from the SAGE III project, is externally mounted on the International Space Station (ISS). This ISS-based instrument uses a technique known as occultation, which involves looking at the light from the Sun or Moon as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere at the edge, or limb, of the planet to provide long-term monitoring of ozone vertical profiles of the stratosphere and mesosphere. The data provided by SAGE III/ISS includes other key components of atmospheric composition and their long-term variability, focusing on the study of aerosols, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen trioxide, and water vapor. SAGE data has historically been used by the World Meteorological Organization to inform their periodic assessments of ozone depletion. These new observations from the International Space Station will continue the SAGE team's contributions to ongoing scientific understanding of the Earth's atmosphere.
Several improvements predominately the ozone, nitrogen dioxide and aerosol products are realized in the version 6.0 data product and cause it to be recommended over version 5.3. These improvements include: filling transmission gaps (caused mainly by sunspots) leading to several hundred more events, additional term in L1 uncertainty, updated ozone absorption cross-section database, more robust covariance computation of aerosol uncertainty. Version 6.0 also has incorporated aerosol flags and particle size distribution information which were previously available in separate files. Further details can be found in the version 6.0 release notes.