NASA launches satellite to map the world’s oceans, lakes, rivers – National | 24CA News

A U.S.-French satellite tv for pc that can map virtually all of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers rocketed into orbit Friday.

The predawn launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California capped a extremely profitable yr for NASA.

Nicknamed SWOT – brief for Surface Water and Ocean Topography – the satellite tv for pc is required greater than ever as local weather change worsens droughts, flooding and coastal erosion, in keeping with scientists.

“We’re going to be able to see things that we could just not see before … and really understand where water is at any given time,” mentioned Benjamin Hamlington at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

About the dimensions of an SUV, the satellite tv for pc will measure the peak of water on greater than 90% of Earth’s floor, permitting scientists to trace the stream and establish potential high-risk areas. It can even survey hundreds of thousands of lakes in addition to 2.1 million kilometres of rivers, from headwater to mouth.

The satellite tv for pc will shoot radar pulses at Earth, with the indicators bouncing again to be obtained by a pair of antennas, one on every finish of a 10-metre increase.

It ought to have the ability to make out currents and eddies lower than 21 kilometres throughout, in addition to areas of the ocean the place water plenty of various temperatures merge.

NASA’s present fleet of almost 30 Earth-observing satellites can’t make out such slight options. And whereas these older satellites can map the extent of lakes and rivers, their measurements aren’t as detailed, mentioned the University of North Carolina’s Tamlin Pavelsky, who’s a part of the mission.

Perhaps most significantly, the satellite tv for pc will reveal the placement and pace of rising sea ranges and the shift of coastlines, key to saving lives and property. It will cowl the globe between the Arctic and Antarctica at the least as soon as each three weeks, because it orbits greater than 890 kilometres excessive. The mission is predicted to final three years.

NASA and the French Space Agency collaborated on the US$1.2 billion mission, with Britain and Canada chipping in.

It’s the newest milestone this yr for NASA. Among the opposite highlights: glamour photographs of the universe from the brand new Webb Space Telescope; the Dart spacecraft’s dead-on slam into an asteroid within the first planetary protection take a look at; and the Orion capsule’s latest return from the moon following a take a look at flight.

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