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Gaps between TEMPO scans
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2026 1:10 pm America/New_York
by ASDC - ghayescrepps
Why are there gaps between TEMPO scans on some days?
Re: Gaps between TEMPO scans
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2026 1:43 pm America/New_York
by ASDC - ghayescrepps
The satellite hosting the TEMPO instrument has regularly scheduled maintenance (e.g., orbital station-keeping maneuvers), which occurs on either Monday or Tuesday and on Saturday. The Monday/Tuesday maintenance results in a ~3 hour gap between two scans, and the Saturday maintenance results in a ~2 hour gap between scans. During these maintenance windows, the instrument stops imaging and closes the aperture to avoid contamination by the spacecraft thrusters.
A Tuesday maintenance example from 2024-07-30: Scan 013 from 20:52:36Z to 21:41:10Z followed by Scan S014 from 2024-07-31 01:05:39Z to 01:32:38Z, where the gap is a little over 3 hours.
A Saturday maintenance example from 2024-08-03: Scan 006 from 13:53:39Z to 14:47:31Z followed by Scan 007 from 16:47:16Z to 16:53:19Z, where the gap is around 2 hours.