MOPITT is Retiring

As one of the first satellite instruments to use gas correlation spectroscopy to make Earth observations, NASA’s Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument was a pioneer in collecting air quality data from space. After more than two decades of successful operation, it was retired in early 2025 because the aging Terra satellite it flies aboard no longer generates enough electricity to power the device. The MOPITT subsetter was also deprecated on March 31, 2025.

MOPITT’s specific focus was on the distribution, transport, sources, and sinks of carbon monoxide (CO) in the troposphere. The spectrometer’s marquee Earthdata products have included MOPITT Near Real-Time Datasets and offerings from the MOPITT Science Investigator-led Processing System (MOPITT SIPS).

MOPITT data have been used in hundreds of scientific papers and many data assimilation projects. As a result, the data have made a crucial contribution to increasing our understanding of Earth’s atmospheric chemistry and CO emission sources.

Looking forward, NASA plans to make a definitive final version of the 25-year MOPITT data record, including a unique product for the CO column in the lower troposphere. The instrument’s researchers also continue to work with satellite missions building on MOPITT’s observations and achievements—such as NASA's Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI)—creating a continuous observational basis of global CO from space to aid in long-term and historical studies of the gas in the atmosphere.