NASA, SpaceX to launch air quality instrument

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time Friday to launch NASA's air quality monitoring instrument, the agency said on Thursday.

The instrument, named TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution instrument), will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

TEMPO is the first space-based instrument to monitor major air pollutants hourly in high spatial resolution -- down to four square miles -- in a region stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Canadian oil sands to below Mexico City, encompassing the entire continental United States, according to NASA.