Ball Aerospace's GEMS air quality sensor for Asian region passes critical design review test

By: InnovatioNews Thursday April 2, 2015 0 comments Tags: air quality sensor, Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Cary Ludtke, GEMS

 

BOULDER - Ball Aerospace's Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) air quality sensor has passed a critical design review (CDR) toward its launch, the company announced.

GEMS is a scanning ultraviolet-visible instrument designed to monitor trans-boundary pollution events for the Korean peninsula and the Asia-Pacific region.

It will be the first air quality sensor in geostationary orbit, Ball said.

"GEMS is an excellent example of how international collaboration can effectively improve quality-of-life," said Cary Ludtke, VP and GM of Ball's Operational Space business unit.

"The successful completion of the CDR for this scientifically advanced instrument allows the program to move into the manufacturing, assembly, integration and testing phase with instrument completion expected in early 2017."

The GEMS spectrometer will provide high spatial and high temporal resolution measurements of ozone, is precursors and aerosols. Hourly measurements will improve early warnings for potentially dangerous pollution events and monitor long-term climate change, Ball said.

The GEMS instrument is the Asian element of a planned global air quality monitoring constellation of geostationary satellites.