TRAQ Program

TRAQ (Tropospheric composition and Air Quality) was an ESA Earth Explorer 7 candidate concept for observing key tropospheric trace gases and aerosols, improving air-quality understanding and tracking long-range pollution transport. The concept targeted regional and global changes, sources and sinks of pollutants, aerosol-cloud interactions, and tropospheric composition in climate change. Its proposed payload combined ultraviolet-to-short-wave-infrared imaging spectrometers, thermal-infrared spectroscopy, a multi-directional polarisation imager, and a cloud imager. ESA assessment material documents TRAQ as a research concept rather than an implemented programme.