Ball Aerospace announced on Friday that the company has shipped the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Tropospheric Emission: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) spectrometer, an air quality monitoring instrument, to the spacecraft manufacturer for integration. Ball will work closely with NASA and the manufacturer to support spacecraft integration and testing. The TEMPO mission is scheduled to launch sometime in 2022.
"TEMPO is an apt name for this instrument, as it will make hourly daytime measurements of major air pollutants across North America. This rapid tempo of measurements will advance our understanding of pollution in the atmosphere from Mexico City to Canada and from coast to coast,” commented Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager of Ball Aerospace’s Civil Space Business Unit.
The TEMPO spectrometer senses ultraviolet and visible light. It will make precise measurements of the critical constituents of air pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants that impact human health and agricultural productivity.Â
Ball finished developing the TEMPO instrument in 2018 and then delivered it to NASA Langley Research Center after a successful final acceptance review. The instrument was stored and maintained there until the spacecraft was ready for integration.Â
The company has over four decades of experience in developing Earth-observing instruments. The TEMPO instrument was built in tandem with the Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), the Asian element of a global air quality monitoring constellation of geostationary satellites. The GEMS launched into orbit in February 2020.Â
About Ball Corporation
Ball Corporation 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 21,500 people worldwide and reported 2020 net sales of $11.8 billion. Ball is an American company headquartered in Westminster, Colorado.
