NASA will monitor pollution from space

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Florida on Friday, carrying a new NASA instrument capable of tracking air pollution over North America.

The tool, called Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), will allow scientists to monitor air pollutants and their emission sources more comprehensively from space than ever before.

According to Kevin Daugherty, TEMPO project manager, NASA’s instrument will measure pollution and air quality across North America on an hourly basis, from Puerto Rico (which is geographically located in Central America) to the oil sands in 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 air pollution control.

According to Daugherty, TEMPO will be activated in late May or early June and will begin producing data in October. For the public, data will begin to be made available in April 2024 online.

the importance of time

For NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, “TEMPO’s mission is more than just studying pollution: It’s about improving life on Earth for everyone.”

“By monitoring the effects of everything from rush hour traffic to pollution from wildfires and volcanoes, NASA’s data will help improve air quality across North America and protect our planet,” he added.

The device is about the size of a washing machine and has been described as a chemical laboratory in space. It will be hosted on the Intelsat communications satellite in geostationary orbit.

Currently, the existing pollution monitoring satellites are in low Earth orbit, which means they can only provide information once a day, at a specific time.

On the other hand, TEMPO will be able to measure atmospheric pollution with an accuracy of up to 10 square kilometers.

What is the geostationary orbit?

Geostationary orbit is common for meteorological and communications satellites, but there is still no air-quality-monitoring instrument that measures gases, explains Carolyn Nolan, an atmospheric physicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The time will be in a geostationary orbit 35,786 kilometers above the equator and will correspond to the Earth’s rotation. This means that it will remain in the same location – North America – at all times of the day or night.

The device will have multiple functions: from measuring levels of various pollutants to providing air quality forecasts and developing emissions control strategies.

Why is the job important?

According to the American Lung Association, more than 40% of the US population, or 137 million people, live in places with unhealthy levels of particulate matter or ozone pollution. Air pollution causes about 60,000 premature deaths each year.

Among the pollutants TEMPO tracks are nitrogen dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, formaldehyde and ozone.

(AFP)