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A US-European satellite designed to extend a decade-long measurement of global sea surface heights was launched into Earth orbit from California on Saturday.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellite took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:17 am and moved south over the Pacific Ocean. The first stage of the Falcon returned to the launch site and landed for reuse.
The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite was supposed to deploy its solar panels and subsequently make first contact with the controllers.
Named after a former NASA official who played a key role in the development of space oceanography, the satellite’s primary instrument is a highly accurate radar altimeter that will bounce energy off the sea surface as it crosses Earth’s oceans. An identical twin, Sentinel-6B, will be launched in 2025 to ensure continuity of the record.
Space-based sea level measurements have been uninterrupted since the 1992 launch of the US-France TOPEX-Poseidon satellite, followed by a number of satellites including the current Jason-3.
Sea surface heights are affected by the warming and cooling of water, allowing scientists to use altimeter data to detect weather conditions such as warm El Nino and cool La Nina.
The measurements are also important for understanding the overall sea level rise due to global warming that scientists warn is a risk to the world’s coasts and billions of people.
“Our Earth is a closely related system of dynamics between earth, ocean, ice, atmosphere and, of course, our human communities, and that system is changing,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Division of Earth Sciences by NASA, in a pre-launch briefing on Friday.
“Since 70% of the earth’s surface is oceanic, the oceans play a huge role in how the whole system changes,” he said.
The new satellite is expected to have unprecedented accuracy.
“This is an extremely important parameter for climate monitoring,” Josef Aschbacher, director of Earth observation for the European Space Agency, told The Associated Press this week.
“We know the sea level is rising,” Aschbacher said. The big question is: how much, how fast.
Other instruments on board will measure how radio signals travel through the atmosphere, providing data on atmospheric temperature and humidity that can help improve global weather forecasts.
Europe and the United States share the $ 1.1 billion (€ 900 million) cost of the mission, which includes the satellite twin.
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