Brenda Marie Rivers
NASA has received a space-based spectrometer Ball Aerospace built to help researchers identify sources of pollutants in the atmosphere and predict quality of air.
Ball said Friday it handed the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution instrument over to NASA after completing a final acceptance review.
TEMPO is designed to operate in geostationary orbit and report hourly measurements of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and other air pollution elements at daylight over North America, Ball said Friday.
Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager of Ball’s civil space business, said data from the instrument will support air quality research, assessment and forecasting efforts.
Lystrup added the company has more than three decades of experience developing spectrometers intended for Earth observation and remote-sensing missions.
Ball developed the TEMPO instrument along with the Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer at a facility in Boulder, Colo.
The company works with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, NASA’s Langley Research and Goddard Space Flight Centers, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory, the Environmental Protection Agency and other academic entities on the GEMS development project.
