ERBS was one of three satellites in the ERBE and it carried two instruments as part of that effort. The ERBE scanner was a set of three detectors that studied longwave radiation, shortwave radiation and total energy radiating from the Earth along a line of the satellite's path. The ERBE non-scanner was a set of five detectors that measured the total energy from the Sun, and the shortwave and total energy from the entire Earth disk and the area beneath the satellite. The other two ERBE missions were included on the NOAA-9 satellite when it was launched in January 1985, and the NOAA-10 satellite when it was launched in October 1986. The ERBE scanner on ERBS stopped functioning on February 2, 1990, and after numerous attempts to recover it, it was powered off for good in March 1991. The non-scanner lost the ability to perform bi-weekly internal and Solar-calibrations, but no degradation in data quality was detected as a result. The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System missions, which began in 1997 with NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and continued through to the Joint Polar Satellite System 1 (JPSS-1) to be launched in 2017, use a legacy instrument that continue the data record of ERBE. The non-scanner was powered off on August 22, 2005, in preparation for decommissioning. The measurements of the ERBE mission were continued with the seven Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments launched between 1998 and 2017, and will be furthered by the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI) to be launched on Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2) in 2021 and JPSS-4 and 2031.
