NASA's Aura Spacecraft (Artist's Concept)

The Aura spacecraft is NASA's atmospheric chemistry mission that is monitoring the Earth's protective atmosphere.

The Aura spacecraft was launched in 2004 as the NASA Earth Observing System's atmospheric chemistry mission. Aura's task is to obtain the observations of atmospheric trace gases necessary for understanding global air quality, to reveal connections between climate change and gases such as ozone and water vapor and to continue stratospheric ozone observations. Aura measurements are key to monitoring the changes in stratospheric ozone and the ozone hole now that international agreements have banned ozone-depleting substances.