NASA has selected a proposal from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to build the first space-based instrument to monitor major air pollutants across the North American continent hourly during daytime. The instrument, to be completed in 2017 at a cost of not more than $90 million, will share a ride on a commercial satellite as a hosted payload to an orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator.
The competitively selected proposal, Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), is led by principal investigator Kelly Chance of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The investigation will for the first time make accurate observations of tropospheric pollution concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde, and aerosols with high resolution and frequency over North America.











