A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument into the geostationary orbit from Florida on April 7 to track air pollution over North America.
TEMPO salient features
- The TEMPO instrument will allow scientists to monitor air pollutants and their emission sources from space more comprehensively than ever before, down to the neighborhood level.
- The instrument will measure pollution and air quality across greater North America on an hourly basis during the daytime, all the way from Puerto Rico up to the tar sands of Canada.
- The data will be used by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other agencies responsible for tackling atmospheric pollution.
- A unique feature of TEMPO, which is about the size of a washing machine and has been described as a chemistry laboratory in space, is that it will be hosted on an Intelsat communications satellite in geostationary orbit.
