‘I’m Intrigued’: Sean Casten Questions Administrator Bill Nelson About NASA’s TEMPO Mission

4 months ago

During a House Science, Space & Technology Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) questioned NASA Administrator Bill Nelson about NASA’s TEMPO Mission.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank you very much.

00:02 And I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kasten.

00:06 Thank you, Mr. Acting Chair, and thank you, Mr. Administrator, for being here.

00:11 I want to chat a little bit about the TEMPO mission that you've got underway.

00:16 If I understand this right, and correct me if I've got this wrong, geosynchronous monitoring

00:20 North America and sort of hourly neighborhood level granularity.

00:24 Am I about right on that, of the monitoring capability it's going to have?

00:29 Just one second.

00:32 This is the mission that's monitoring local pollutants in the atmosphere.

00:38 Well, it is one of the ones that is doing that.

00:44 And what we are trying to understand, all these different things that affect our climate,

00:52 such as dust, such as aerosols, such as the changing of the elevation of oceans and fresh

01:05 water, all of these missions are designed on some particular aspect of then putting

01:13 it all together in a 3D composite.

01:19 And I'm totally supportive of the mission.

01:22 I guess my first question is just, is that going to be the highest temporal and spatial

01:29 resolution we're going to have on this level of monitoring, at least from a space-based

01:33 system?

01:34 Well, it is the next iteration.

01:38 But we'll get even more sophisticated as we go on.

01:43 And will the data that comes out of that be publicly available, or is there any concern

01:48 about – I mean, I could think of national security reasons why you might not – we

01:51 might want to be a little cautious about a particular plume.

01:54 I could also imagine reasons why the private sector might be reluctant.

01:58 So what's going to be the process for that data being made available to the public?

02:01 It's available.

02:03 Okay.

02:04 In real time, as it's released?

02:05 Well, there'll be a lag of some seconds as it comes back to Earth.

02:13 Okay.

02:14 That's cool.

02:17 Is there the potential to do that globally?

02:23 And I'm thinking about things like several years ago there was this concern about hydrofluorocarbon

02:28 leaks from China that were violating international treaties.

02:33 And I would imagine from a national security perspective, if we had the ability to pinpoint

02:38 where that leak was coming from at a specific point – it might be in our national interest;

02:42 the Chinese might have been reluctant – is there the potential to make this global, or

02:46 does that create some diplomatic problems?

02:48 Global.

02:49 Global.

02:50 Okay.

02:51 Just like what I mentioned earlier, we have one up there called EMET.

02:56 It was going to look at dust coming off of the Sahara.

03:02 Lo and behold, unexpectedly, it can pinpoint very specifically methane leaks.

03:11 Oh, wow.

03:12 And that's global.

03:13 So you are going to be monitoring methane from this as well?

03:16 Absolutely.

03:17 Okay.

03:18 It's already happening.

03:19 Well, you're reading my mind, and I'm intrigued, and let us know how we can continue

03:25 to help this.

03:26 I'm – a part of what I'm thinking about on this is that we are going down the path

03:33 to have global methane monitoring, global methane tracking as a climate-forcing compound

03:39 in the atmosphere.

03:40 We know that methane leak rates exceed what is documented, right?

03:46 If you look at, like, the balance on natural gas extraction and what's sold, we know

03:50 there's a gap that's bigger.

03:52 And it's really hard to pinpoint exactly who's responsible.

03:56 To the extent that this has the ability to get granular and temporal, I would assume

04:02 that this starts to be something where we can look and say, okay, this specific entity

04:05 at this time of day was operating in that location, and so we have some accountability.

04:10 Will that data then be – I guess, what's the plan to coordinate with other agencies

04:15 on the use of this data?

04:18 It is available and it also is very specific.

04:24 This is what was such a pleasant surprise about the spacecraft EMAP.

04:33 We can pinpoint methane emissions now so specifically that, for example, if there's

04:44 a real polluter, we've got the evidence, but what we find out is that some industries

04:51 don't even know that they are emitting methane.

04:56 And so this is valuable information for that industry to be able to stop it.

05:02 And methane, of course, is one of the major greenhouse gases.

05:08 That's with –

05:09 And carbon dioxide.

05:10 No, it's precisely why I asked the question.

05:12 We were up in Alaska last year and looking at permafrost melt and how you figure out

05:17 where the global balance goes and how you track all that.

05:19 Well, that's fascinating.

05:20 Happy to have you here, proud to have you here, and look forward to working with you

05:25 to make sure that we can continue to expand these programs.

05:27 Yield back.

05:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]

‘I’m Intrigued’: Sean Casten Questions Administrator Bill Nelson About NASA’s TEMPO Mission

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