Spacex Launches Intelsat IS-40e Mission

"Intelsat 40e (IS-40e) will provide focused coverage over North America for our commercial aviation, maritime, land mobility and networks customers, and will monitor and track air pollution across North America with NASA's hosted payload Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO)," satellite services provider Intelsat SA explained.

SpaceX has launched its 23rd mission of 2023 with the company’s Falcon 9 rocket lofting the Intelsat-40e/TEMPO payload to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Liftoff of the Intelsat-40e/TEMPO mission occurred at the opening of a 119-minute window at 12:30 AM EDT (04:30 UTC) on April 7 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, NasaSpaceFlight reported.

This mission was the second of what is expected to be another busy month for the launch provider as it continues to trend toward another record-setting year for launches.

Intelsat-40e is a high-throughput geostationary communication satellite that will provide focused coast-to-coast coverage to customers over North America. The satellite was built by Maxar Technologies and is based on the company’s 1300-class satellite platform. Intelsat-40e masses around 5,440 kg and is the 54th satellite built by Maxar for Intelsat, in a partnership that has lasted more than 40 years.

For this mission, the satellite will host an integrated payload for NASA, the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO). TEMPO is a UV-visible spectrometer built by Ball Aerospace that will measure atmospheric pollution over North America. The instrument, about the size of a dishwasher, will allow the first hourly measurements of pollution across the continent during the daytime, allowing researchers to quickly and better understand changes in air quality.

TEMPO is the second of a three-instrument constellation designed to monitor air pollution on an hourly basis. The first, the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) is a sister instrument to TEMPO and is mounted onto the Korean Aerospace Research Institute GEO-KOMPSAT-2B satellite which was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in Feb. 2020 and allows measurements to be taken over Asia.

The final instrument of the constellation will be mounted onto the Sentinel-4 satellite. It is currently expected to be launched in 2024 and will provide coverage to Europe and Northern Africa.