Scientists will be able to monitor and assess air quality and pollution levels from space thanks to a pollution monitoring gadget that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Elon Musk's SpaceX jointly launched.
On a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) was launched on Friday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. (April 7).
TEMPO will be the first space-based instrument to measure air quality over North America hourly during the day and at spatial regions of several square miles -- far better than the current limits of about 100 square miles in the US, according to NASA in a press release. TEMPO will do this from a fixed geostationary orbit above the equator.
"The TEMPO mission aims to improve everyone's quality of life on Earth, not merely to investigate pollution. NASA data will help improve air quality across North America and safeguard the environment by tracking the effects of everything from rush-hour traffic to pollutants from forest fires and volcanoes, according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Data from TEMPO would be crucial in enhancing air quality alerts, researching the impacts of lightning on ozone, and monitoring pollution levels in the case of forest fires, volcanoes, and the effects of fertilizer application, in addition to examining real-time pollution during rush hours.
According to Karen St. Germain, division director for NASA's Earth Sciences Division, "NASA makes data from instruments like TEMPO easily accessible to everyone."
"This means that everyone will be able to access air quality information with a higher degree of precision - in both time and location - than they've ever been able to before, from community and industry leaders to asthma patients. Additionally, that gives us the knowledge we need to begin tackling one of the most urgent problems in human health," St. Germain continued.
According to NASA, TEMPO will significantly enhance scientific data records on air pollution, including nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, ozone, and formaldehyde, by observing air pollution over the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, and a portion of the island of Hispaniola.
According to Xiong Liu, deputy principal investigator for TEMPO at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "Our TEMPO tagline is "It's about time," which alludes to TEMPO's capacity to give hourly air pollution statistics.
After more than ten years of development, it is finally time to launch TEMPO in order to generate actual TEMPO data and usher in a new age of air quality monitoring over North America, according to Xiong.
TEMPO will be a member of a virtual constellation of air quality satellites that will measure pollution throughout the Northern Hemisphere from its geostationary orbit, a high Earth orbit that enables satellites to synchronize Earth's rotation, according to NASA. According to NASA's tropospheric composition program manager and TEMPO program scientist Barry Lefer, "This ushers in a new era in our ability to observe air pollution over North America, including the entire continental United States."
In order to comprehend the transit of air pollution around the world, Lefer continued, "It's also opening the door for us to work more closely with our international partners."
According to NASA, the TEMPO instrument was created by Ball Aerospace and mounted onto Intelsat 40E by Maxar.
