NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) measures the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over urban areas to help researchers better characterize the sources and sinks of the greenhouse gas.
The first of three instruments in a pioneering new space-based constellation launched from French Guiana toward an orbit where it will make hourly daytime measurements of several air pollutants.
South Korea's Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) instrument rocketed into space on the Korean Aerospace Research Institute GEO-KOMPSAT-2B satellite. From a geostationary, or fixed, orbital location, GEMS will make measurements over Asia. NASA's Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), scheduled to launch in 2022 as a payload on Intelsat 40e, will make measurements over North America. To complete the constellation the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-4 satellite, expected to launch in 2023, will make measurements over Europe and North Africa.
Once complete, this air quality satellite “virtual constellation” will measure pollutants — including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols — in unprecedented detail and frequency. Air pollution can be damaging to the human respiratory and cardiovascular system and to the environment. Near-real-time data products from the constellation will significantly improve air quality forecasting around the most densely populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere. That data can also help inform decisions by policymakers to improve air quality.
"The GEMS launch was a key step in building an integrated global observing system for air quality, which will give us an unprecedented view of air pollution around the world at higher temporal and spatial scales," said Barry Lefer, tropospheric composition program manager in the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Current satellite instruments that monitor air quality — such as NASA's Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on Aura and ESA's TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on the Sentinel-5 Precursor (Sentinel-5P) — circle the Earth in sun-synchronous polar orbits that only allow them to make once-daily measurements over any given part of the planet.
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