NASA Fights Air Pollution with New Monitoring Jet

Air pollution may have a new enemy--or at least a new observer. NASA used an aircraft that looked like a fighter jet in order to take measurements of air quality over the Bay Area in California.

The small jet, which took to the air on Thursday, went out to capture ozone and greenhouse gases in order to test. Yet this isn't the only jet that is planning on taking off. This Friday, NASA will continue to test its aircraft. One of them will fly as low as 1,000 feet in order to better understand pollution.

Lead by NASA's Langley Research Center, each aircraft is specially outfitted with an array of air quality measurement instruments. Their under wing pods are equipped as an airborne science lab; intakes on the bottom sample air while computers do real-time measurements and analysis. The data gathered will be used in concert with ground-level air monitoring networks that will shed light on how satellites could potentially be used to make measurements through a column of air.

The jet stream, a "current" of air in the Earth's atmosphere, can deliver pollution all the way from Asia to California. This means that air pollution is a global problem; conditions in Beijing could also have an impact in California.

Currently, air quality scientists do not know how many of particulates and other air pollutants are located above the surface layer of the atmosphere. Satellites have been unable to distinguish between air pollution high in the atmosphere and near the surface of the Earth. However, this current project will help determine how emissions move on a broad-scale level.

NASA and international partners in Europe and Asian plan to launch geostationary satellites designed to study air quality as early as 2017.