Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer
| Operator | NIER, KARI |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Ball Aerospace |
| Instrument type | UV/Vis spectrometer |
| Function | Atmospheric chemistry and pollution monitoring |
| Mission duration | 10 years |
| Began operations | 2020 |
| Website | nesc |
| Properties | |
| Resolution | 0.6 nm |
| Spectral band | 300–500 nm (UV, Vis) |
| Host spacecraft | |
| Spacecraft | GEO-KOMPSAT-2B[1] |
| Operator | KARI |
| Launch date | 18 February 2020, 22:18:00 UTC |
| Rocket | Ariane 5 ECA |
| Launch site | Guiana Space Center, Kourou, French Guiana] |
| Orbit | Geostationary, 128.2° E |
Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) is an air quality observation satellite mission of National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) of Korea.[2] GEMS was built by Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp (BATC),[3] and launched by Ariane 5 from Guiana Space Center, Kourou, on February 18th, 2020.[4] GEMS is the first ultraviolet(UV)-visible hyperspectrometer in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) to observe air quality over Asia at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution.[5][6] Before GEMS, satellite remote sensing of air quality was from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) providing observations 1 - 2 times a day (e.g. OMI, TROPOMI, MOPITT etc.).[7][8][9] EPIC onboard DISCOVR has provided atmospheric composition observations including aerosol and ozone from the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point, L1, covering the sunlit part of the Earth.[10] GEMS has provided successfully the diurnal variation of air quality over Asia in addition to spatial distribution since Nov. 2020, after the in orbit test (IOT). Diurnal variation of emissions from urban, industry, ship track, and wildfires, dust outbreak, volcanic eruption, and UV indices are well captured by GEMS.[11]
GEMS is the first component of the geostationary constellation of air quality observation, together with the NASA's TEMPO over North America launched in 2023[12] and ESA's Sentinel-4 over Europe launched in 2025,[13] as recognized by the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites (CEOS).[14] Furthermore, there is an initiative to launch a similar UV-Vis instrument over the Middle East and Africa, known as Middle East & Africa Space-based Monitoring of Atmospheric-pollution(MEASMA) to cover missing part of the globe.
References
[edit]- ↑ "JCSAT-17 & GEO-KOMPSAT-2B | Ariane 5 ECA". 17 February 2020.
- ↑ "Environmental Satellite Center". National Institute of Environmental Research. Archived from the original on 2026-04-30.
- ↑ "Ball Aerospace-built Geostationary Air Quality Instrument Launches Successfully". February 19, 2020.
- ↑ "Ariane 5's second launch of 2020".
- ↑ "South Korea launches first satellite in a global constellation to monitor air quality. | Climate & Clean Air Coalition".
- ↑ Kim, Jhoon; et al. (2020). "New Era of Air Quality Monitoring from Space: Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS)". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 101: E1–E22. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0013.1.
- ↑ Levelt, Pieternel F.; et al. (2018). "The Ozone Monitoring Instrument: Overview of 14 years in space". Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 18 (8): 5699–5745. Bibcode:2018ACP....18.5699L. doi:10.5194/acp-18-5699-2018.
- ↑ "TROPOMI Observing Our Future | TROPOMI Observing Our Future | TROPOMI: TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument". www.tropomi.eu. April 17, 2023.
- ↑ "MOPITT | Terra".
- ↑ "EPIC :: DSCOVR". epic.gsfc.nasa.gov.
- ↑ "AMT – Special issue – GEMS: First year in operation (AMT/ACP inter-journal SI)".
- ↑ "TEMPO - NASA Science". 16 June 2023.
- ↑ "Sentinel-4".
- ↑ "A Geostationary Satellite Constellation for Observing Global Air Quality: An International Path Forward" (PDF). Committee on Earth Observation Satellites. 2011-04-12. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2026-04-29.