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December 16, 2022 2:33 p.m.
Will Sullivan
Early Friday morning, the new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, beginning its journey toward a low-Earth orbit.
From its perch, the satellite will measure water on more than 90 percent of Earth’s surface. The data will help scientists better understand the role oceans play in climate change, the effect of global warming on bodies of water and how people can prepare for natural disasters, per a statement. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales.
... “It’s a game changer,” Rosemary Morrow, an oceanographer at the Laboratory of Space, Geophysical and Oceanographic Studies in France and one of the science leads for the mission, tells Nature News’Jeff Tollefson. “It will be like putting on a pair of glasses when you are short-sighted: Things are sort of vague, and then suddenly everything comes into clarity.”
The satellite launched at 6:46 a.m. Eastern time on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and was expected to take about 52 minutes to reach low-Earth orbit. SWOT will spend six months calibrating, then begin collecting data from 554 miles above the Earth, writes Space.com’s Josh Dinner.
Most of the data will be collected by an instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer, according to Wired’sRamin Skibba. It will shoot a pulse of radar off water’s surface, and the spacecraft’s two antennae will receive the reflected return signal. The antennae are on either end of a 33-foot-long boom, per CNN’s Ashley Strickland.
The satellite will allow scientists to collect more detailed measurements of Earth’s water than ever before. It will observe the planet’s entire surface between 78 degrees south and 78 degrees north latitude at least once every 21 days, according to NASA’s statement. As a result, SWOT will be able to observe nearly all of Earth’s lakes larger than 15 acres and rivers wider than 330 feet across. ...
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Will Sullivan
Early Friday morning, the new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, beginning its journey toward a low-Earth orbit.
From its perch, the satellite will measure water on more than 90 percent of Earth’s surface. The data will help scientists better understand the role oceans play in climate change, the effect of global warming on bodies of water and how people can prepare for natural disasters, per a statement. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales.
... “It’s a game changer,” Rosemary Morrow, an oceanographer at the Laboratory of Space, Geophysical and Oceanographic Studies in France and one of the science leads for the mission, tells Nature News’Jeff Tollefson. “It will be like putting on a pair of glasses when you are short-sighted: Things are sort of vague, and then suddenly everything comes into clarity.”
The satellite launched at 6:46 a.m. Eastern time on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and was expected to take about 52 minutes to reach low-Earth orbit. SWOT will spend six months calibrating, then begin collecting data from 554 miles above the Earth, writes Space.com’s Josh Dinner.
Most of the data will be collected by an instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer, according to Wired’sRamin Skibba. It will shoot a pulse of radar off water’s surface, and the spacecraft’s two antennae will receive the reflected return signal. The antennae are on either end of a 33-foot-long boom, per CNN’s Ashley Strickland.
The satellite will allow scientists to collect more detailed measurements of Earth’s water than ever before. It will observe the planet’s entire surface between 78 degrees south and 78 degrees north latitude at least once every 21 days, according to NASA’s statement. As a result, SWOT will be able to observe nearly all of Earth’s lakes larger than 15 acres and rivers wider than 330 feet across. ...