NASA Sends New Instrument To Space To Track Air Pollution

A powerful rocket has been launched by the US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Saturday, which would provide unprecedented resolution of monitoring major air pollutions. The Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument will improve life on Earth by revolutionising the way scientists observe air quality from space.

According to the Administrator of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Bill Nelson, the TEMPO mission is more than just studying the air pollution. The instrument will improve the life on Earth for all. “By monitoring the effects of everything from rush-hour traffic to pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, NASA data will help improve air quality across North America and protect our planet,” he added.

TEMPO will be the first space-based instrument to measure the air quality over North America from a fixed geostationary orbit above the equator. Many square miles of space are covered across North America hourly during the day, which is much better than the current limits of around 100 square miles. The TEMPO instrument was built by Ball Aerospace and integrated onto Intelsat 40E by Maxar.

A Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Florida into space on Friday carrying new NASA device that can track the air pollution over the North America down to the neighbourhood level. The launch took place at 0030 hrs. TEMPO, will allow the scientists to monitor air pollutants and their emission sources more extensively than ever before.

The information will be crucial for studies on rush-hour pollution, the potential for better air quality alerts, the effects of lightning on ozone, the movement of pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, and even the consequences of fertiliser application.

The instrument has been launched in collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. NASA in an official tweet said that the instrument will be the size of the dishwasher, but will be powerful enough to observe pollutants.

Karen St. Germain, division director of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division said that NASA always make data from instruments like TEMPO easily accessible to all.

Existing pollution monitoring satellites are in low Earth orbit, which means they can only provide observations once a day at fix time. But this new instrument will be able to make hourly measurements over North America. So, it will be able to give hourly updates as long as the Sun is up.

In addition to the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, and a portion of the island of Hispaniola will also benefit from TEMPO’s observations, which will significantly improve the scientific data record on air pollution, including ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, and formaldehyde, according to NASA. It’s geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above the equator, TEMPO will also match the rotation of the Earth, means it will stay over the same location, North America, at all times.

This signals a new era in our ability to detect air pollution over North America, covering the entire continent, according to Barry Lefer, TEMPO programme scientist and tropospheric composition programme manager for NASA.

It is also said that TEMPO will start operating at the end of May or the beginning of June and start generating data in October, however it won’t be made accessible to the general public until April of the following year. According to the American Lung Association, 137 million people in the US, or more than 40 percent of the population, reside in areas with harmful levels of ozone or particle pollution, and air pollution is to blame for 60,000 early deaths annually. Wildfire-related pollutants will be tracked by TEMPO, which are becoming increasingly common and damaging result of climate change.