Emily Chan
In the decades since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have turned the air thick with smog through burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, vehicle emissions, and more.
Our planet has become so polluted that previous methods of tracking pollution are no longer good enough.
Now, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is tracking pollution from space in an effort to improve air quality.
In August, NASA announced that the new satellite-based instrument they’re using to measure air pollution from space had sent its first images back to Earth.
The instrument is called TEMPO, which stands for Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution. With TEMPO, researchers will be able to search for tiny particles in the air across North America, allowing them to gather more detailed data than ever before. These small particles are contaminants that are harmful not only to humans but all life on Earth.
On April 7, TEMPO launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first instrument sent into space to enter a geostationary orbit, meaning that it stays in the same position in the sky so it can capture images of the same sites multiple times a day.
For the first time, NASA has the ability to monitor variations in pollution every hour. TEMPO tracks the wavelengths of reflected visible and ultraviolet light.
This way, the instrument can identify which air pollutants are present, such as nitrogen dioxide, aerosols, ozone, and formaldehyde.
Between the end of July and early August, TEMPO took some scans showing nitrogen dioxide levels over North America at six different times of day.
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