Bach Research Corp. has completed two contracts and begun one more for optical components to be used in satellites studying the Earth’s atmosphere. Under a new contract with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Bach will manufacture custom diffraction gratings and spares that will fly aboard a pair of orbital pollution-monitoring missions. The components will be part of GEMS (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer), which will fly on a South Korean geostationary satellite, and TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution), a NASA Earth Venture mission. Both instruments are being built and designed by Ball Aerospace. Meanwhile, Bach recently delivered diffraction gratings and optics for two instruments that will fly aboard NASA’s ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) spacecraft, which will compare weather patterns in the lower and upper atmosphere and is scheduled for launch in 2017. Under a contract with Praxis Inc., Bach created multiple sets of gratings and spares to be incorporated into the MIGHTI (Michelson Interferometer for Global High-Resolution Thermospheric Imaging) instrument, which is being built at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. And under a contract with the University of California, Berkeley, Space Science Laboratories, Bach created custom UV optics for ICON’s FUV (far-ultraviolet) instrument. For more information, visit www.bachresearch.com.