The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Thursday. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo
April 6 (UPI) — SpaceX is scheduled to launch NASA’s air pollution monitoring instrument TEMPO into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for a launch from Space Launch Complex 40 early Friday morning with a 119-minute launch window starting at 12:30 a.m. EDT. The launch will be livestreamed by SpaceX on YouTube.
The launch will send NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution into geostationary orbit over the equator attached to an Intelsat 40e communication satellite. Once in place and active, TEMPO will monitor the presence of air pollutants over North America.
“TEMPO will be measuring pollution and air quality across greater North America on an hourly basis during the daytime, all the way from Puerto Rico up to the tar sands of Canada,” said Kevin Daugherty, TEMPO’s project manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center, according to Spaceflight Now.
The instrument will also help measure air quality in major cities.
Friday’s mission will be the fourth launch for the Falcon 9 first stage booster. When it returns to Earth about 8 minutes after launch, the first stage booster will be recovered by drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Intelsat satellite will deploy at about 32 minutes after launch.