Patent ID: 7869952

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a sensor on a moving platform above earth, the sensor comprising a plurality of fields of regard along an orbit, each field of regard of the plurality of fields of regard comprising a respective first subscan and a respective second subscan; slewing the sensor to, and sampling an atmospheric region at, a respective first plurality of lines-of-sight to generate the respective first subscan and slowing the sensor to, and sampling the atmospheric region at, a respective second plurality of lines-of-sight to generate the respective second subscan, the respective first subscan comprising a plurality of first subscan samples at the respective first plurality of lines-of-sight of the atmospheric region, the respective second subscan comprising a plurality of second subscan samples at the respective second plurality of lines-of-sight of the atmospheric region; generating an interlaced limb scan for the each field of regard by interleaving at least one of the first subscan samples between at least two of the second subscan samples; and applying two-dimensional tomographic retrieval to the interlaced limb scan to determine at least one of density, temperature, and chemical composition data of the atmospheric region.