BROOMFIELD, Colo., Aug. 24,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Ball Aerospace is celebrating
alongside its mission partners today as the Tropospheric Emissions:
Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument releases its first
images of Earth, the next step in its mission to improve air
quality monitoring across greater North
America.
TEMPO launched on April 7, 2023,
from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as part of NASA's Earth
Venture Instrument program and led by Principal Investigator
Kelly Chance of the Center for
Astrophysics | Harvard &
Smithsonian (CfA). Following a monthslong commissioning process,
the Ball-built instrument opened its aperture for the first time to
perform solar calibration and make its inaugural scan across the
continent. The instrument is performing as expected in its initial
tests.
"Achieving first light from TEMPO is a major milestone in our
goal to provide a complete picture of air quality issues across
the United States and beyond,"
said Dr. Alberto Conti, vice
president and general manager, Civil Space, Ball Aerospace. "This
mission will fundamentally transform the way we measure pollutants
in our air, providing new insights for public health officials,
atmospheric researchers and members of the public looking to
protect themselves from dangerous conditions."
TEMPO uses a geostationary ultraviolet/visible spectrometer to
scan across the continent hourly — over the continental
United States in addition to most
of Mexico and Canada — capturing daytime measurements of
major air pollutants like ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide
and formaldehyde. The high-resolution and frequency of images will
provide precise data on the origin, concentration and movement of
pollution over time, far exceeding the capabilities of current
ground-based monitoring systems.
Now that the instrument is active, the TEMPO team will spend the
coming months validating spatial, spectral and radiometric
performance, as well as the science data processing chain. Once
that process is complete, members of the public and the scientific
community will have access to near real-time data packaged by the
CfA and distributed by NASA.
TEMPO was developed alongside the Geostationary Environment
Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), another Ball Aerospace-built
instrument that launched in 2020 as part of an air quality
monitoring mission for the South Korean National Institute of
Environmental Research.
The TEMPO mission is a collaboration between NASA's Langley
Research Center and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The instrument is
integrated and hosted on Intelsat's IS-40e satellite built by
Maxar.
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customers to perform beyond expectation and protect what matters
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deliver actionable data and intelligence, and ensure those who
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About Ball Corporation
Ball Corporation (NYSE: BALL)
supplies innovative, sustainable aluminum packaging solutions for
beverage, personal care and household products customers, as well
as aerospace and other technologies and services primarily for the
U.S. government. Ball Corporation and its subsidiaries employ
21,000 people worldwide and reported 2022 net sales of $15.35
billion. For more information, visit www.ball.com, or connect
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