Mission Overview

credit: tempo.si.edu

The NASA TEMPO mission is scheduled for launch in April 2023 and will be hosted on Intelsat 40e, a geostationary communications satellite, at 91.0° West longitude for providing hourly East-West scans in the Field of Regard (FoR) covering Greater North America. For each geospatial scene in the FoR, the TEMPO grating spectrometer will measure the solar backscattered radiance from ultraviolet (UV; 290-490 nm) to visible (540-740 nm) wavelengths with a spectral resolution and sampling of 0.6 and 0.2 nm, respectively, and at suburban spatial resolution of 2.0 km x 4.75 km at the center of the FoR. The unique measurement capabilities of TEMPO will allow for the retrieval of aerosol and cloud parameters, along with the major elements in the tropospheric ozone (O3) chemistry cycle consisting of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), formaldehyde (H2CO), glyoxal (C2H2O2), water vapor (H2O), and UVB radiation. With its multi-spectral capabilities, TEMPO will also provide enhanced sensitivity to O3 in the lowest 2 km of the troposphere, thereby characterizing boundary layer, free tropospheric, and stratospheric O3. The mission will also commit up to 25% of its observing time for conducting higher frequency, sub-hourly scans (every 5 or 10 minutes is possible) over selected portions of the FoR. Altogether, the unprecedented spatiotemporal observations from TEMPO will greatly advance the monitoring of the rapidly varying emissions and chemistry that governs our air quality.

TEMPO Early Adopters

Join TEMPO Early Adopters Community Mailing List

An Early Adopter program was established in 2019 to enhance interactions between the TEMPO Science Team and the community of stakeholders and end users. The goal of the Early Adopter program is to understand and demonstrate the suite of capabilities and application benefits of TEMPO data before launch to promote quick and effective use of future operational data products. A key component of the program is the generation and dissemination of proxy TEMPO data along with data from current applicable sensors to enable early use and analysis by Early Adopters. These pre-launch activities will inform end users on the impact of TEMPO data in their research and operations, identify advantages and limitations, and provide feedback to the TEMPO Science Team for understanding how products can be tailored to meet end users' needs. Overall, these activities aim to maximize the value of future TEMPO data products and prolong mission lifetime. Click the button above to get involved in the TEMPO Early Adopters program.

Objectives

Actively engage with a broad spectrum of stakeholders/end-users within the air quality and public health communities to maximize the value of TEMPO data products for applications

Demonstrate and enhance TEMPO applications through use of pre-launch proxy data and relevant observations from current sensors

Align the TEMPO products, data interfaces, and observing time to end-user needs and applications

Application Focus Areas

Air Quality Monitoring & Forecasting
Regulatory Science
Air Pollution Emissions & Monitoring
Public Health
Vegetation and Ocean Monitoring
Weather Analysis & Forecasting

NASA SPoRT Background & Collaboration

The SPoRT Center was established in 2002 for transitioning unique satellite observations and research capabilities to end users to improve short term forecasting and decision support. SPoRT team members work within a research to operations/operations to research paradigm to introduce experimental products to the operational environment via active involvement of end users. Involving the end users in the process ensures the products being developed by the researchers meet the end users' needs. This highly successful paradigm will be utilized in pre-launch activities of the TEMPO Mission to engage the air quality and public health communities regarding the capabilities of TEMPO.

NASA SPoRT research to operations / operations to research paradigm
Technical Contact: Dr. Aaron Naeger (aaron.naeger@nasa.gov)
Responsible Official: Dr. Andrew Molthan (andrew.molthan@nasa.gov)
Page Curator: Paul Meyer (paul.meyer@nasa.gov)