Ball Aerospace + KARI… GEMS For The Portfolio (Satellite Instrument)

[SatNews] Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been awarded a contract from the…

…Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to build the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) for the National Institute of Environmental Research in the Ministry of Environment of South Korea. GEMS is a geostationary scanning ultraviolet-visible spectrometer designed to monitor trans-boundary pollution events for the Korean peninsula and Asia-Pacific region.

The spectrometer provides high spatial and high temporal resolution measurements of ozone, its precursors, and aerosols. Hourly measurements by GEMS will improve early warnings for potentially dangerous pollution events and monitor long-term climate change. Ball Aerospace and KARI will design, fabricate and test GEMS which is manifested on KARI’s GEO-KOMPSAT-2B geostationary satellite for a 2018 launch.

The GEMS instrument is the Asian element of a global air quality monitoring constellation of geostationary satellites that includes the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) spectrometer. Ball is the TEMPO instrument provider for NASA Langley Research Center and Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory on this Earth Venture line program.