A new sensor intends to deliver information about volcanic activity and air quality as quickly as possible via a tiny satellite, helping to speed up the response to eruptions.
The Nanosat Atmospheric Chemistry Hyperspectral Observation System, or NACHOS, will fly 300 miles (480 kilometers) above Earth and use a hyperspectral imager to survey the ground.
NACHOS was launched into space on the 17th Cygnus cargo resupply mission, which docked at the International Space Station on Monday (Feb. 21); it will be deployed in late May as Cygnus exits the orbiting complex.
The tiny satellite, once operational, might be able to detect chemicals in areas as small as 0.15 square miles (0.4 square kilometers), around the size of the Mall of America in Minnesota. As a result, NACHOS will be the smallest and highest-resolution instrument for searching for gases linked with volcanoes, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other gases.
If all goes well, NACHOS might pave the way for future Earth-observing systems tasked with detecting changes in air quality in tiny areas such as cities, neighborhoods, or power plants, NASA said in a statement on Saturday (Feb. 19).
NACHOS will build on decades of study into using orbit to look for atmospheric trace chemicals that can be used as proxies for natural or human activity. As an example, NASA pointed out that nitrogen dioxide is a typical byproduct of fossil fuel combustion that also serves as a trace gas for carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
However, scientists believe that NACHOS will function as an early warning system in the event of catastrophic volcanic eruptions, which have already occurred this year with emissions from Mount Etna and a world-shaking explosion from Tonga.
"A dormant volcano just waking up may emit SO2 [sulfur dioxide] before there is any detectable seismic activity. That gives us a chance to identify a potentially erupting volcano before it actually blows," Steve Love, researcher and task lead with the space and remote sensing group at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in the NASA statement.
