The TSA is upgrading its explosive trace-detection equipment at airport checkpoints by tapping into funding from last year's federal jobs' stimulus law.
The TSA's Dept. of Homeland Security recently contracted with Morpho Detection for a few hundred of its Itemiser DX desktop units, which are designed to detect explosives in fixed locations at airport checkpoints.
The almost $16 million contract was partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The Christmas Day Northwest Flight 253 incident, in which a passenger allegedly had explosive materials on his body as the jet was set to land in Detroit, highlighted the need for more optimum ways of screening passengers for explosives.
The DX desktop units, pictured below, are used with swabs, known as "traps," to test for the presence of explosives, and are said to be the first trace detectors which can test for positive and negative ions simultaneously.
Morpho Detection spokesman Steve Hill says the TSA already uses an earlier product, the Itemiser 2, for secondary passenger screening.
The Itemiser DX is designed to upgrade those earlier products at airports around the U.S.
The stimulus law, which was designed to create jobs and nurture economic activity, comes with transparency requirements.
You can view details of the Morpho Detection award and project-- including the longitude, latitude and Congressional district where the work is being done -- here.
Of note, the project summary details the number of jobs it created.
The amount? Zero.