Monitoring air pollutants hourly across North America

Slated to launch in early 2023 aboard a commercial satellite to a geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above the equator, the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument is a UV-visible spectrometer, and will be the first ever space-based instrument to monitor air pollutants hourly across the North American continent during daytime. It will collect high-resolution measurements of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants, data which will revolutionize air quality forecasts. The instrument will resolve pollution levels to regions of several square miles, a significant improvement over existing limits of about 100 square miles. The TEMPO mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Learn more about the TEMPO mission.