The first large contract for Sentinel-5P was signed in July 2009 for Tropomi instrument between the European Space Agency and Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs which contributed €78 million.

[6] On 8 December 2011, ESA selected Astrium UK as a prime contractor for the satellite, signing contract worth €45.5 million.

Tropomi is a spectrometer sensing ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) wavelengths of light to monitor ozone, methane, formaldehyde, aerosol, carbon monoxide, NO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere.

The total mass of Tropomi is approximately 200 kg (440 lb) with a power consumption of 170 watts on average and a data output of 140 Gbit per orbit.

Light from the slit is re-collimated, diffracted by the immersed-grating at high-order, and finally imaged onto a two-dimensional detector by a high aperture relay lens.

The SWIR instrument was aligned, focussed and characterised at the Mullard Space Science laboratory thermal vacuum facility in Surrey, UK.

[citation needed] Sentinel-5P Tropomi showed substantial reductions in nitrogen dioxide amounts over Chinese cities between late January and February 2020.