NASA Launches TEMPO Mission to Monitor Air Pollution in Real Time.
NASA's Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument, designed to measure air pollution across the continental United States, is set to launch on a commercial communications satellite, Intelsat 40e, on April 7. The instrument will provide hourly data on air pollution at a much higher resolution than low Earth orbit spacecraft. The project is a win-win for all parties involved, allowing unused capacity on Maxar's heritage satellite design to be leveraged for government missions, reducing the cost of access to space for the government, and reducing the cost for Intelsat. Hosted payloads have not been as prevalent as originally predicted due to schedule risks and a lack of available satellites that can accommodate payloads.