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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Since launching in 2023, NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution mission, or TEMPO, has been measuring the quality of the air we breathe from 22,000 miles above the ground. June 19 marked the successful completion of TEMPO’s 20-month-long initial prime mission, and based on the quality of measurements to date, the mission has been extended through at least September 2026. The TEMPO mission is NASA’s first to use a spectrometer to gather hourly air quality data continuously over North America during daytime hours. It can see details down to just a few square miles, a significant advancement over previous satellites.
“NASA satellites have a long history of missions lasting well beyond the primary mission timeline. While TEMPO has completed its primary mission, the life for TEMPO is far from over,” said Laura Judd, research physical scientist and TEMPO science team member at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “It is a big jump going from once-daily images prior to this mission to hourly data. We are continually learning how to use this data to interpret how emissions change over time and how to track anomalous events, such as smoggy days in cities or the transport of wildfire smoke.”
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By measuring nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and formaldehyde (HCHO), TEMPO can derive the presence of near-surface ozone. On Aug. 2, 2024 over Houston, TEMPO observed exceptionally high ozone levels in the area. On the left, NO2 builds up in the atmosphere over the city and over the Houston Ship Channel. On the right, formaldehyde levels are seen reaching a peak in the early afternoon. Formaldehyde is largely formed through the oxidation of hydrocarbons, an ingredient of ozone production, such as those that can be emitted by petrochemical facilities found in the Houston Ship Channel. Trent Schindler/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio When air quality is altered by smog, wildfire smoke, dust, or emissions from vehicle traffic and power plants, TEMPO detects the trace gases that come with those effects. These include nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and formaldehyde in the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
“A major breakthrough during the primary mission has been the successful test of data delivery in under three hours with the help of NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group. This information empowers decision-makers and first responders to issue timely air quality warnings and help the public reduce outdoor exposure during times of higher pollution,” said Hazem Mahmoud, lead data scientist at NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center located at Langley Research Center.
…the substantial demand for TEMPO's data underscores its critical role…
hazem mahmoud
NASA Data Scientist
TEMPO data is archived and distributed freely through the Atmospheric Science Data Center. “The TEMPO mission has set a groundbreaking record as the first mission to surpass two petabytes, or 2 million gigabytes, of data downloads within a single year,” said Mahmoud. “With over 800 unique users, the substantial demand for TEMPO’s data underscores its critical role and the immense value it provides to the scientific community and beyond.” Air quality forecasters, atmospheric scientists, and health researchers make up the bulk of the data users so far.
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On April 14, strong winds triggered the formation of a huge dust storm in the U.S. central plains and fueled the ignition of grassland fires in Oklahoma. On the left, the NO2 plumes originating from the grassland fires are tracked hour-by-hour by TEMPO. Smoke can be discerned from dust as a source since dust is not a source of NO2. The animation on the right shows the ultraviolet (UV) aerosol index, which indicates particulates in the atmosphere that absorb UV light, such as dust and smoke. Trent Schindler/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio The TEMPO mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, whose Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian oversees daily operations of the TEMPO instrument and produces data products through its Instrument Operations Center.
Datasets from TEMPO will be expanded through collaborations with partner agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is deriving aerosol products that can distinguish between smoke and dust particles and offer insights into their altitude and concentration.
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On May 5, TEMPO measured NO2 emissions over the Twin Cities in the center of Minnesota during morning rush hour. The NO2 increases seen mid-day through the early evening hours are illustrated by the red and black shaded areas at the Red River Valley along the North Dakota state line. These levels are driven by emissions from the soils in agriculturally rich areas. Agricultural soil emissions are influenced by environmental factors like temperature and moisture as well as fertilizer application. Small fires and enhancements from mining activities can also be seen popping up across the region through the afternoon.Trent Schindler/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio “These datasets are being used to inform the public of rush-hour pollution, air quality alerts, and the movement of smoke from forest fires,” said Xiong Liu, TEMPO’s principal investigator at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. “The library will soon grow with the important addition of aerosol products. Users will be able to use these expanded TEMPO products for air quality monitoring, improving forecast models, deriving pollutant amounts in emissions and many other science applications.”
The TEMPO mission detects and highlights movement of smoke originating from fires burning in Manitoba on June 2. Seen in purple hues are observations made by TEMPO in the ultraviolet spectrum compared to Advanced Baseline Imagers (ABIs) on NOAA’s GOES-R series of weather satellites that do not have the needed spectral coverage. The NOAA GOES-R data paired with NASA’s TEMPO data enhance state and local agencies’ ability to provide near-real-time smoke and dust impacts in local air quality forecasts.NOAA/NESDIS/Center for Satellite Applications and Research “The TEMPO data validation has truly been a community effort with over 20 agencies at the federal and international level, as well as a community of over 200 scientists at research and academic institutions,” Judd added. “I look forward to seeing how TEMPO data will help close knowledge gaps about the timing, sources, and evolution of air pollution from this unprecedented space-based view.”
An agency review will take place in the fall to assess TEMPO’s achievements and extended mission goals and identify lessons learned that can be applied to future missions.
The TEMPO mission is part of NASA’s Earth Venture Instrument program, which includes small, targeted science investigations designed to complement NASA’s larger research missions. The instrument also forms part of a virtual constellation of air quality monitors for the Northern Hemisphere which includes South Korea’s Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Sentinel-4 satellite. TEMPO was built by BAE Systems Inc., Space & Mission Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). It flies onboard the Intelsat 40e satellite built by Maxar Technologies. The TEMPO Instrument Operations Center and the Science Data Processing Center are operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge.
For more information about the TEMPO instrument and mission, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/tempo/
About the Author
Charles G. Hatfield
Science Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center
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Last Updated Jul 03, 2025 LocationNASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) Earth Earth Science Earth Science Division General Langley Research Center Missions Science Mission Directorate Explore More
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By USH
These images captured by the Curiosity rover in 2014 reveals yet another unexplained aerial phenomenon in the Martian atmosphere, a cigar-shaped object with a consistent width and rounded ends.
What makes this anomaly particularly compelling is the sharp clarity of the image. According to Jean Ward the stars in the background appear crisp and unblurred, indicating that the object is not the result of motion blur or a long exposure. Notably, the object appears in five separate frames over an 8-minute span, suggesting it is moving relatively slowly through space, uncharacteristic of a meteorite entering the atmosphere. It also lacks the fiery tail typically associated with atmospheric entry.
Rather than a meteor, the object more closely resembles a solid, elongated craft of unknown origin. When oriented horizontally, it even appears to feature a front-facing structure, possibly a porthole or raised dome, hinting at a cockpit or command module.
Whether this object is orbiting beyond the visible horizon or connected to the surface far in the distance, its sheer size is unmistakable. Its presence raises compelling questions, could this be further evidence of intelligently controlled craft, whether of extraterrestrial or covert human origin, navigating through Martian airspace?View the full article
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By NASA
A new online portal by NASA and the Alaska Satellite Facility maps satellite radar meas-urements across North America, enabling users to track land movement since 2016 caused by earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, and other phenomena.USGS An online tool maps measurements and enables non-experts to understand earthquakes, subsidence, landslides, and other types of land motion.
NASA is collaborating with the Alaska Satellite Facility in Fairbanks to create a powerful web-based tool that will show the movement of land across North America down to less than an inch. The online portal and its underlying dataset unlock a trove of satellite radar measurements that can help anyone identify where and by how much the land beneath their feet may be moving — whether from earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, or the extraction of underground natural resources such as groundwater.
Spearheaded by NASA’s Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the effort equips users with information that would otherwise take years of training to produce. The project builds on measurements from spaceborne synthetic aperture radars, or SARs, to generate high-resolution data on how Earth’s surface is moving.
The OPERA portal shows how land is sinking in Freshkills Park, which is being built on the site of a former landfill on Staten Island, New York. Landfills tend to sink over time as waste decomposes and settles. The blue dot marks the spot where the portal is showing movement in the graph.Alaska Satellite Facility Formally called the North America Surface Displacement Product Suite, the new dataset comes ready to use with measurements dating to 2016, and the portal allows users to view those measurements at a local, state, and regional scales in a few seconds. For someone not using the dataset or website, it could take days or longer to do a similar analysis.
“You can zoom in to your country, your state, your city block, and look at how the land there is moving over time,” said David Bekaert, the OPERA project manager and a JPL radar scientist. “You can see that by a simple mouse click.”
The portal currently includes measurements for millions of pixels across the U.S. Southwest, northern Mexico, and the New York metropolitan region, each representing a 200-foot-by-200-foot (60-meter-by-60-meter) area on the ground. By the end of 2025, OPERA will add data to cover the rest of the United States, Central America, and Canada within 120 miles (200 kilometers) of the U.S. border. When a user clicks on a pixel, the system pulls measurements from hundreds of files to create a graph visualizing the land surface’s cumulative movement over time.
Land is rising at the Colorado River’s outlet to the Gulf of California, as indicated in this screenshot from the OPERA portal. The uplift is due to the sediment from the river building up over time. The graph shows that the land at the blue dot has risen about 8 inches (20 centimeters) since 2016.Alaska Satellite Facility “The OPERA project automated the end-to-end SAR data processing system such that users and decision-makers can focus on discovering where the land surface may be moving in their areas of interest,” said Gerald Bawden, program scientist responsible for OPERA at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This will provide a significant advancement in identifying and understanding potential threats to the end users, while providing cost and time savings for agencies.”
For example, water-management bureaus and state geological surveys will be able to directly use the OPERA products without needing to make big investments in data storage, software engineering expertise, and computing muscle.
How It Works
To create the displacement product, the OPERA team continuously draws data from the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-1 radar satellites, the first of which launched in 2014. Data from NISAR, the NASA-ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, will be added to the mix after that spacecraft launches later this year.
The OPERA portal shows that land near Willcox, Arizona, subsided about 8 inches (20 centimeters) since between 2016 and 2021, in large part due to groundwater pumping. The region is part of an area being managed by state water officials.Alaska Satellite Facility Satellite-borne radars work by emitting microwave pulses at Earth’s surface. The signals scatter when they hit land and water surfaces, buildings, and other objects. Raw data consists of the strength and time delay of the signals that echo back to the sensor.
To understand how land in a given area is moving, OPERA algorithms automate steps in an otherwise painstaking process. Without OPERA, a researcher would first download hundreds or thousands of data files, each representing a pass of the radar over the point of interest, then make sure the data aligned geographically over time and had precise coordinates.
Then they would use a computationally intensive technique called radar interferometry to gauge how much the land moved, if at all, and in which direction — towards the satellite, which would indicate the land rose, or away from the satellite, which would mean it sank.
“The OPERA project has helped bring that capability to the masses, making it more accessible to state and federal agencies, and also users wondering, ‘What’s going on around my house?’” said Franz Meyer, chief scientist of the Alaska Satellite Facility, a part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.
Monitoring Groundwater
Sinking land is a top priority to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. From the 1950s through the 1980s, it was the main form of ground movement officials saw, as groundwater pumping increased alongside growth in the state’s population and agricultural industry. In 1980, the state enacted the Groundwater Management Act, which reduced its reliance on groundwater in highly populated areas and included requirements to monitor its use.
The department began to measure this sinking, called subsidence, with radar data from various satellites in the early 2000s, using a combination of SAR, GPS-based monitoring, and traditional surveying to inform groundwater-management decisions.
Now, the OPERA dataset and portal will help the agency share subsidence information with officials and community members, said Brian Conway, the department’s principal hydrogeologist and supervisor of its geophysics unit. They won’t replace the SAR analysis he performs, but they will offer points of comparison for his calculations. Because the dataset and portal will cover the entire state, they also could identify areas not yet known to be subsiding.
“It’s a great tool to say, ‘Let’s look at those areas more intensely with our own SAR processing,’” Conway said.
The displacement product is part of a series of data products OPERA has released since 2023. The project began in 2020 with a multidisciplinary team of scientists at JPL working to address satellite data needs across different federal agencies. Through the Satellite Needs Working Group, those agencies submitted their requests, and the OPERA team worked to improve access to information to aid a range of efforts such as disaster response, deforestation tracking, and wildfire monitoring.
NASA-Led Project Tracking Changes to Water, Ecosystems, Land Surface News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jun 06, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A lot can change in a year for Earth’s forests and vegetation, as springtime and rainy seasons can bring new growth, while cooling temperatures and dry weather can bring a dieback of those green colors. And now, a novel type of NASA visualization illustrates those changes in a full complement of colors as seen from space.
Researchers have now gathered a complete year of PACE data to tell a story about the health of land vegetation by detecting slight variations in leaf colors. Previous missions allowed scientists to observe broad changes in chlorophyll, the pigment that gives plants their green color and also allows them to perform photosynthesis. But PACE now allows scientists to see three different pigments in vegetation: chlorophyll, anthocyanins, and carotenoids. The combination of these three pigments helps scientists pinpoint even more information about plant health. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite is designed to view Earth’s microscopic ocean plants in a new lens, but researchers have proved its hyperspectral use over land, as well.
Previous missions measured broad changes in chlorophyll, the pigment that gives plants their green color and also allows them to perform photosynthesis. Now, for the first time, PACE measurements have allowed NASA scientists and visualizers to show a complete year of global vegetation data using three pigments: chlorophyll, anthocyanins, and carotenoids. That multicolor imagery tells a clearer story about the health of land vegetation by detecting the smallest of variations in leaf colors.
“Earth is amazing. It’s humbling, being able to see life pulsing in colors across the whole globe,” said Morgaine McKibben, PACE applications lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s like the overview effect that astronauts describe when they look down at Earth, except we are looking through our technology and data.”
Anthocyanins, carotenoids, and chlorophyll data light up North America, highlighting vegetation and its health.Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Anthocyanins are the red pigments in leaves, while carotenoids are the yellow pigments – both of which we see when autumn changes the colors of trees. Plants use these pigments to protect themselves from fluctuations in the weather, adapting to the environment through chemical changes in their leaves. For example, leaves can turn more yellow when they have too much sunlight but not enough of the other necessities, like water and nutrients. If they didn’t adjust their color, it would damage the mechanisms they have to perform photosynthesis.
In the visualization, the data is highlighted in bright colors: magenta represents anthocyanins, green represents chlorophyll, and cyan represents carotenoids. The brighter the colors are, the more leaves there are in that area. The movement of these colors across the land areas show the seasonal changes over time.
In areas like the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, plants undergo less seasonal change. The data highlights this, showing comparatively steadier colors as the year progresses.
The combination of these three pigments helps scientists pinpoint even more information about plant health.
“Shifts in these pigments, as detected by PACE, give novel information that may better describe vegetation growth, or when vegetation changes from flourishing to stressed,” said McKibben. “It’s just one of many ways the mission will drive increased understanding of our home planet and enable innovative, practical solutions that serve society.”
The Ocean Color Instrument on PACE collects hyperspectral data, which means it observes the planet in 100 different wavelengths of visible and near infrared light. It is the only instrument – in space or elsewhere – that provides hyperspectral coverage around the globe every one to two days. The PACE mission builds on the legacy of earlier missions, such as Landsat, which gathers higher resolution data but observes a fraction of those wavelengths.
In a paper recently published in Remote Sensing Letters, scientists introduced the mission’s first terrestrial data products.
“This PACE data provides a new view of Earth that will improve our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and function,” said Fred Huemmrich, research professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, member of the PACE science and applications team, and first author of the paper. “With the PACE data, it’s like we’re looking at a whole new world of color. It allows us to describe pigment characteristics at the leaf level that we weren’t able to do before.”
As scientists continue to work with these new data, available on the PACE website, they’ll be able to incorporate it into future science applications, which may include forest monitoring or early detection of drought effects.
By Erica McNamee
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 05, 2025 EditorKate D. RamsayerContactKate D. Ramsayerkate.d.ramsayer@nasa.gov Related Terms
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