NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation: An Earth Venture Imaging Spectrometer Science Mission

The NASA Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) will use imaging spectroscopy to measure the mineral composition of the Earth's arid land regions from the International Space Station. The new directly observed surface composition products will be validated and used to initialize state-of-the-art Earth System Models to improve constraint of the sign and magnitude of dust-related radiative forcing at regional and global scales as well as predict the increase or decrease of available dust sources under future climate scenarios. EMIT is a NASA Earth Venture Instrument (EVI) Mission planned to launch in 2022. The instrument is a state-of-the-art optically fast Dyson imaging spectrometer that covers the spectral range from the visible to the short wavelength infrared (VSWIR). EMIT measurements and products will be openly available to the full science and applications communities for the range of additional investigations they enable.