The tropospheric mission of NASA was launched in 2023 to observe air pollution. It was abbreviated as TEMPO and has revolutionised the scientists’ statement of the air high quality from house. It was situated round 22,000 miles above the Earth, and it makes use of a spectrometer to gather daytime air high quality knowledge on an hourly foundation over North America. It covers small areas inside a couple of sq. miles and considerably advances applied sciences, providing solely one-time readings per day. This mission was profitable inside 20 months at its prime section from June 19, 2025, and is now prolonged until September 2026 due to the distinctive high quality of the info.
TEMPO Tracks the Air High quality
As per NASA, TEMPO retains a monitor of the pollution resembling nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, and ozone within the troposphere, which is the bottom atmospheric layer. This layer will get triggered by the facility vegetation, automobile emissions, mud, smog, and wildfire smoke. It provides hourly data quite than as soon as a day, mentioned Laura Judd, a researcher at NASA. By this, we get to know concerning the emissions change over time. Additional, how you can monitor smog within the metropolis or wildfire smoke. Such a real-life incident helps astronomers perceive the evolution of air air pollution intimately.
The foremost milestone throughout this mission was to get sub-three-hour knowledge, which permits faster air high quality alerts. This enhances the decision-making and helps the primary responders, mentioned the lead knowledge scientist at NASA’s Atmospheric Science Information Centre, Hazem Mahmoud. With over 800 customers, TEMPO has handed two petabytes of knowledge downloads in a yr. It proves the immense worth of the well being researchers and air high quality forecasters.
NASA’s Collaboration with NOAA and SAO
NASA labored along with NOAA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the previous producing the aerosol merchandise for distinguishing smoke from mud and analysing the focus. As per Xiong Liu, the principal investigator, these datasets improve the forecast of air pollution, enhance the fashions, and help public alerts on the time of peak emissions.
NASA’s Earth Enterprise Instrument program is operating the TEMPO mission and a world constellation of air displays, together with GEMS of South Korea and Sentinel-4 of ESA. The formal mission evaluate this and consider the progress, inform future space-based air high quality efforts, and be useful in refining the objectives.