A South Korean research institute and the U.S.' National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, have agreed to conduct a joint research project to improve air quality in South Korea.
 
The National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) said Friday that it signed the agreement with NASA at Langley Research Center in Virginia on Thursday.
 
Around 20 people, including NASA Associate Administrator John Grunsfeld and Hong Ji-hyung, a senior NIER researcher, attended the signing ceremony.
 
Under the agreement, the two organizations will cooperate on observing the atmosphere over the Korean Peninsula in May and June next year employing state-of-the-art observation devices from land, air and space.
 
The NIER expected NASA’s knowhow and technological prowess in satellite and aerial observation to help identify the rapid change in air pollution in the Seoul metropolitan region, adding that weather forecasts in South Korea are also expected to improve with NASA’s help.
 
It also expressed hoped that the joint project will help South Korea secure the technologies needed for its Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer, or GEMS, South Korea’s first geostationary satellite scheduled to launch in 2019.