A new joint mission between NASA and Italy’s space agency will seek to assess the health effects of airborne pollution in some of the world’s largest cities. The Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission, a cooperation between NASA and its partners at the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), marks a mission first by the space agencies with its focus on public health with a satellite effort.

MAIA is scheduled to launch sometime in late 2024, including ASI’s PLATiNO-2 satellite and specialty science equipment provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), aimed at the collection and study of data from a range of sensors and observatories, as well as data from atmospheric models that the mission will analyze.