Instruments

Monitoring global air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from space is critical to understanding climate change, protecting public health, and safeguarding biodiversity. Delivering accurate data relies on objective, space-based measurements: identifying who is emitting what, pinpointing where reductions are needed, and verifying whether climate policies are working. 

For over three decades, our engineers – working alongside Dutch knowledge partners SRON, KNMI, and TNO – have designed, built, and tested the instruments that set the global benchmark for atmospheric science, including: 

• OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument): A historic milestone in Earth observation that enabled humanity to track the growth and gradual recovery of the ozone layer, while mapping global air quality trends for over 15 years.
• Tropomi (Sentinel-5P): The premier instrument monitoring our atmosphere today. Tropomi’s pinpoint accuracy uncovered crucial emission realities worldwide—such as revealing that Australia’s coal mines were responsible for up to 55% of the country’s methane emissions, rather than the reported 6%.
• SPEXone (NASA PACE): Launched aboard NASA’s PACE mission, this state-of-the-art multi-angle polarimeter maps atmospheric aerosols—such as smoke, dust, and industrial pollutants—with unprecedented detail, unlocking vital missing data for global climate models.

Whether developing advanced optical components, custom structural assemblies, or high-reliability space systems, our flight heritage proves our capacity to bring the world’s most challenging space technologies to life.