Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution
TEMPO attached to a communications satellite.
OperatorNASA
ManufacturerBall Aerospace
Instrument typeUV/Vis spectrometer
FunctionAtmospheric chemistry and pollution monitoring
Began operations2023 (planned)[1][2]
Websitetempo.si.edu
Properties
Resolution0.6 nm
Spectral band290–740 nm (UV, Vis)
Host spacecraft
SpacecraftIntelsat 40e[3]
OperatorIntelsat
Launch date7 April 2023, 4:30:00 UTC
RocketFalcon 9 Block 5 B1076.4
Launch siteCape Canaveral, SLC-40
OrbitGeostationary, 91° W

Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) is a space-based spectrometer designed to measure air pollution across greater North America at a high resolution and on an hourly basis.[4][5] The ultraviolet–visible spectrometer will provide hourly data on ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and formaldehyde in the atmosphere.[6]

TEMPO is a hosted payload on a commercial geostationary communication satellite with a constant view of North America. TEMPO's spectrometer measures reflected sunlight from the Earth's atmosphere and separates it into 2,000 component wavelengths.[4] It will scan North America from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Alberta oil sands to Mexico City.[7] TEMPO will form part of a geostationary constellation of pollution-monitoring assets, along with the planned Sentinel-4 from ESA and Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) from South Korea's KARI.[8]

On 3 February 2020, Intelsat announced that the Intelsat 40e satellite will host TEMPO. Maxar Technologies, the builder of the satellite, is responsible for payload integration.[9][1][2] The launch occurred on 7 April 2023.[10]

Earth Venture-Instrument program

TEMPO, which is a collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, is NASA's first Earth Venture-Instrument (EVI) mission.[11][12] The EVI program is an element within the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) program office, which is under NASA's Science Mission Directorate Earth Science Division (SMD/ESD). EVI's are a series of innovative "science-driven, competitively selected, low cost missions". The series of "Venture Class" missions were recommended in the 2007 publication Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond.[13] "[I]nnovative research and application missions that might address any area of Earth science" are selected through frequent "openly-competed solicitations".[14]

Earth Venture missions are "small-sized competitively selected orbital missions and instrument missions of opportunity" and include NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT), ICESat-2, SAGE III on ISS, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO), Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS), and the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation lidar (GEDI).[15]

References

  1. ^ a b "Maxar Technologies Will Build Next-Generation Intelsat Epic Geostationary Communications Satellite with NASA Hosted Payload". Maxar Technologies (Press release). Business Wire. 3 February 2020. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  2. ^ a b Werner, Debra (22 July 2019). "Maxar to install NASA pollution sensor on commercial satellite". SpaceNews. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  3. ^ https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/03/17/spacex-selected-to-launch-intelsat-telecom-satellite-nasa-pollution-monitor/ - 18 March 2020
  4. ^ a b William Harwood (7 April 2023). "SpaceX launches Intelsat relay station carrying NASA air pollution monitor". CBS News. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  5. ^ Justine Calma (7 April 2023). "NASA's powerful new air quality monitor has launched into space". Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  6. ^ "NASA's TEMPO instrument to measure air quality in NY, LA and Chicago". CBS News. 14 March 2023. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  7. ^ "NASA's TEMPO Mission to Launch in Early April". 3 April 2023. Retrieved April 20, 2023.
  8. ^ Zoogman, P.; et al. (January 2017). "Tropospheric emissions: Monitoring of pollution (TEMPO)" (PDF). Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer. 186: 17–39. Bibcode:2017JQSRT.186...17Z. doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.05.008. PMC 7430511. PMID 32817995.
  9. ^ "Maxar Integrates NASA Pollution-Monitoring Payload with Intelsat 40e Spacecraft". Maxar Technologies. 23 November 2021. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  10. ^ Baylor, Michael. "Falcon 9 Block 5 - Intelsat-40e/TEMPO". Next Spaceflight. Retrieved 15 February 2023.
  11. ^ "TEMPO Twitter page". Twitter.com. Retrieved 5 June 2019. "TEMPO will measure pollution of N. America hourly at high spatial resolution. NASA's first Earth Venture Instrument mission is a collaboration with Smithsonian".
  12. ^ "Missions: Earth Venture-Instrument". NASA. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  13. ^ Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond. National Academies Press. 2007. doi:10.17226/11820. ISBN 978-0-309-66714-2. LCCN 2007936350.
  14. ^ "Missions: Venture Class". NASA. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  15. ^ Neeck, Steven P. (October 2015). Meynart, Roland; Neeck, Steven P; Shimoda, Haruhisa (eds.). The NASA Earth Science Flight Program: An update. Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XIX. Vol. 9639. 963907. Bibcode:2015SPIE.9639E..07N. doi:10.1117/12.2199919. ISBN 978-1-62841-849-1. S2CID 131347159.

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