NASA’s new satellite to hourly measure air pollution hourly has shown significant progress and now the space agency officials are already thinking about ways to extend its life.
Key points
- Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) is NASA’s first Earth-observation satellite in geostationary orbit and has developed further from previous polar-orbiting satellites provided daily observations to provide 10 to 12 daily scans.
- TEMPO was sent aloft in April 2023. It was launched to measure atmospheric pollution from Canada’s oil sands to the Yucatán Peninsula.
- It also gets data from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and made its first North American scans in early August.
- It’s the first time to have the range of spectral data from a geostationary satellite.
- TEMPO provides hourly updates on atmospheric pollutants, offering a more dynamic view of air quality.
- The data gathered by TEMPO will be shared with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enhance air quality forecasting.
