New Delhi: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed an instrument that will improve the way scientists observe air quality from space. The US space agency, in collaboration with Elon Musk, launched an air-quality monitor called TEMPO, or Tropospheric Emission Monitoring of Pollution Instrument, on April 7.
Eye on three major pollutants
NASA reported that the NASA-Smithsonian instrument TEMPO is the first space-based instrument that will monitor four square miles of major air pollutants every hour. The US space agency posted on Twitter that TEMPO will provide hourly reports of the day’s air quality over South America. It will monitor the three main pollutants and will keep warning about the increasing pollution in the city.
The special type of equipment
According to the information, special instruments have been installed in Tempo, which will pass over North America every hour during the day i.e. in the light. It will record the level of air pollution in an area of 10 square kilometers every time. Its range will be from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from central Canada to Mexico City. It is a device the size of a large washing machine, made by Ball Aerospace. It was launched into geostationary orbit with the Intelsat 40E satellite built by Maxar.
What is a geostationary orbit?
A geostationary orbit is a common orbit known for weather and communications satellites, according to Carolyn Nowlan, an atmospheric physicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. However, there was not yet an air quality instrument to measure the gases. Existing pollution-monitoring satellites are in low Earth orbit. This means that they can provide information only once a day at a given time. Nowlan said that one of the cool things about tempo is that it gives information about every hour of the day.
Efforts to avoid dirty air all over the world
For the last 30 years, efforts to clean the dirty air are going on all over the world. The smoke coming out of big factories and vehicles was spoiling the health of the people. There has been a steady improvement in the air quality index in the US, but the majority of the population still breathes bad air.
