Welcome to TEMPO

Mission Overview

NASA's first Earth Venture Instrument mission will measure pollution of North America, from Mexico City to the Canadian oil sands, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific hourly and at high spatial resolution. TEMPO observations are from the geostationary vantage point, flying on a telecommunications host spacecraft with the goal to launch in 2023.

TEMPO Fact Sheet

TEMPO Brochure

Learn More

TEMPO Instrument

The TEMPO instrument is a UV-visible spectrometer, and will be the first ever space-based instrument to monitor air pollutants hourly across the North American continent during daytime. It will collect high-resolution measurements of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants, data which will revolutionize air quality forecasts.

Learn More

Latest News

August 24, 2023 | TEMPO Instrument Captures Its First Images of Air Pollution Over Greater North America
TEMPO is the first space-based probe to measure air pollution hourly over North America at neighborhood scale.

Learn More

Graphic overview of TEMPO mission TEMPO will be the North American component of a global group of satellites tracking air pollution from geosynchronous orbit. Artist's illustration of TEMPO satellite host The TEMPO mission will measure air pollution at 355 times the resolution of the GOME-2 satellite, and 50 times the OMI satellite's spatial scale. Illustration of data flow for TEMPO operations