Blog

March 16, 2023

We Can Solve the Scourge of Light Pollution. TEMPO Will Help Us.

Can you see the Milky Way in the night sky where you live? There’s a good chance you cannot. Artificial lighting—from homes, streetlamps, cars, and other sources—pollutes 80% of the night sky across the globe, leaving one third of our population unable to see this majestic band of stars that stretches across our night sky. The problem is only getting worse: light pollution..... Read More

Feb 14, 2023

A Global Constellation of Satellites Aimed at Measuring Air Quality

In the spring of 2023, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and NASA are launching a scientific instrument into space dedicated to measuring air quality across the United States. Just like how weather satellites measure precipitation and temperature, this new instrument, called TEMPO, will measure all the major air pollutants across North America every hour in high resolution.... Read More

Jan 31, 2023

How Ozone Affects Us and Why We’re Tracking it with TEMPO
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Side of Ozone

Ozone is a gas that both protects us from the sun and pollutes our air, depending on its altitude. High up in the stratosphere, about 10-15 miles in the air, natural ozone blocks the sun’s UV radiation from both warming our planet and damaging our skin. Meanwhile, down at ground level, burning fossil fuels, wood, and garbage leads to formation of ozone in the air we breathe, where it can cause health issues... Read More

Jan 03, 2023

TEMPO: Tracking Air Pollution to Support a Sustainable Future for All

Weather satellites make it easy to track weather patterns across North America, but the same cannot be said about tracking air pollution. While our phones can tell us when it’s going to stop raining to the minute, we do not have the same ability to measure and predict the movement of pollutants in the air as precisely... Read More