An instrument that will one day measure air pollution from space is getting a taste of what space is like — but in a Colorado testing facility. Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, is undergoing thermal vacuum chamber testing at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder. The test, which simulates the extreme heat and cold of outer space, will verify that TEMPO can survive the less-than-welcoming environment of its eventual home. In the above photo, TEMPO is visible being installed in the chamber.
Scheduled to launch on a commercial satellite within the next few years, TEMPO will monitor major air pollutants across North America hourly and in greater detail than ever before. TEMPO was competitively selected through NASA’s Earth Venture Instrument program. It is the first project funded by the program, which supports small, targeted science investigations designed to complement NASA’s larger research missions.
Ball is building the TEMPO instrument. Principal Investigator Kelly Chance of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, leads the TEMPO effort. Project Scientist David Flittner and Project Manager Stephen Hall are based at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
NASA Langley Research CenterPhoto courtesy of Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp.