NASA’s Aerial Campaign Reveals Insights Into US Coastal Air Pollution

NASA has launched a mission to assess air pollution around the US coasts, in a groundbreaking attempt to understand more about the air we breathe.

NASA planes will fly over towns and coasts this summer, from June 17 to July 2, to collect critical information on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

Mapping the Invisible: Understanding Urban Emissions

Although the project is modest in scope for NASA, its ramifications are enormous.

The campaign, which focuses on highly populated urban regions, tries to raise awareness to emissions that are frequently overlooked.

The initiative helps fund the NASA Student Airborne Research Program, which places interns at the undergraduate level conducting practical research.

NASA's aircraft, such as the P-3 and King Air B200, will conduct maneuvers to gather samples above power plants, landfills, and metropolitan centers while flying at altitudes lower than those of commercial flights.

These flights will occur over California, sections of Virginia, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

The East Coast flights will end on June 26 while the West Coast flights will take place from June 29 to July 2.

Data for the Future: Informing Policy and Protecting Health

In addition to increasing the understanding of air quality, the collected data will assist inform policy decisions that could possess long-term consequences for the environment and public health.

The aircraft's equipment will monitor many greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, as well as pollutants like formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone.

The mission's major purpose is to validate data from the TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument, which provides hourly daylight assessments of air pollutants across North America.

This data must be made available to policymakers and scientists so that they may make more informed judgments on air quality legislation and climate action.

Instruments Used in this Mission

The goal of NASA's air pollution mapping is strongly reliant on the equipment it utilizes to give high-resolution, near-real-time data on air quality.

The principal instrument is TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution), a cutting-edge spectrometer mounted on a commercial satellite and launched into geostationary orbit in April 2023.

TEMPO takes hourly daytime scans of the atmosphere over North America, ranging from Mexico City to central Canada and from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts.
In order to detect pollution, TEMPO measures the absorption and scattering of sunlight by gases and particles in the troposphere, the lowest region of the Earth's atmosphere.

Throughout the day, it monitors excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from various emission sources, generating detailed maps that show how pollutants move and concentrate over time.

To collect samples directly from the atmosphere, the program takes use of additional instrumentation on NASA aircraft, such as the P-3 and King Air B200, which fly at lower altitudes than commercial flights.

These instruments detect a wide range of pollutants, including formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone, as well as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

The data collected by this equipment could be extremely useful for researchers interested in the respiratory system and the effects of pollution on human health.

Furthermore, it enables decision-makers to make educated decisions about climate action and air quality requirements.

The mission's capacity to collect comprehensive data on air quality demonstrates NASA's cutting-edge technology and collaborative efforts with its partners.

NASA's finding is a crucial step toward better understanding and mitigating the impacts of air pollution.

NASA is ensuring that the tale of air pollution includes not just the problems we face, but also the solutions we can implement by carefully mapping contaminants and supporting in the education of future scientists.