Three, two, three. This? Two, two. A rocket launch like no other. And lift off. Its mission to launch a revolutionary satellite that could improve air quality for millions of Americans. It's called Tempo, run by NASA in the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and for the first time ever, will track pollution in North America in real time down to the local community level.

How much of a game changer is this?

Tempo is really creating revolutionary data for air quality studies. And that's because we, for the first time, can measure hourly, and we can also measure really high spatial resolutions.

Caroline Nulland, a physicist at the Harvard Smithsonian, says that the satellite is meant to work together with ground monitors, providing communities everywhere with air quality data like never before.

So a gram monitor gives a really high accuracy point measurement of pollution, but you can't put them everywhere. So there are places where they're really sparse, for instance, in rural areas.

So here's how it works. The satellite looks at light that's reflected off the surface, the atmosphere and clouds, monitoring air pollutants like ozone and nitrogen dioxide by scanning North America during the day. This data could be used by officials to develop policies to regulate and reduce sources of pollution. And it turns out this data could save lives. Air pollution is the number four leading risk factor for preventable death worldwide. It's been linked to devastating health conditions, including cancer, heart and lung disease, neurological problems, and even immune system disorders.

People don't often realize the toll that air pollution takes, but nonetheless, it has a major toll on our health.

Daniel Careon, an adjunct professor of public health in Mount Sinai, is hoping to use this data to reduce asthma, flarups in children from communities of color.

Black and Latino children are more likely to experience childhood asthma and also experience some of the highest levels of air pollution. And so identifying the places that people are exposed and that are potentially leading to these increases in exacerbations are all really important to informing our understanding of how that all works, but then also how we can prevent it.

Last year, BBC News visited El Chamizal, a community in El Paso, Texas, where many Latino residents say they are feeling the devastating effects of air pollution. Cimele de Aslan, a community leader, says that things have only gotten worse. Part of the problem, she says, is the lack of monitors on the ground, giving an incomplete picture of air quality. While one lies in a nearby park, she says that's not enough. It's not data that.

Represents.

What the people are experiencing. Tempa will aim to fill this gap in the community by measuring air pollution near the oil refineries or the International Bridge with Mexico.

Satellites that are up in orbit may do a better job of trying to triangulate what people are actually being exposed to on the ground.

The data already available to some researchers nationwide will be available to everybody in early 2024. For Cimelli and the community of El Chamizal, change can't come soon enough.

Wow, Dr. Seyl. This is so fascinating. It seems like the first time the US has ever had this much information about air pollutants at our fingertips. How are they going to practically use this data to keep people healthy?

Susan Clague, there's about 400 researchers who already have access to the data today. Early next year, they're actually building an app on iOS and Android where people can actually log on and see really high-quality, air-quality forecasts in terms of what pollution they are actually being exposed to.

-wow, in.

Their communities. -in their community.

That's great. Dr. Seyle, thank you so much.

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