SpaceX launched a joint NASA-European environmental analysis satellite tv for pc early Monday, the second in an ongoing billion-dollar challenge to measure long-term adjustments in sea stage, a key indicator of local weather change.
The primary satellite tv for pc, generally known as Sentinel-6 and named in honor of NASA local weather researcher Michael Freilich, was launched in November 2020. The follow-on spacecraft, Sentinel-6B, was launched from California atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 12:21 a.m. EST.
Each satellites are geared up with a complicated cloud-penetrating radar. By timing how lengthy it takes beams to bounce again from the ocean 830 miles beneath, the Sentinel-6 satellites can monitor sea ranges to an accuracy of about one inch whereas additionally measuring wave top and wind speeds.
The challenge builds on earlier missions relationship again to the early Nineties which have supplied an uninterrupted stream of sea stage knowledge.
That knowledge signifies sea ranges are slowly however absolutely rising, extensively interpreted as proof of world warming prompted largely by human industrial exercise.
However in step with latest Trump administration insurance policies aimed toward scaling again local weather analysis and the interpretation of such knowledge, NASA didn’t instantly seek advice from “local weather change” or “world warming” in a Sentinel-6B pre-launch briefing Saturday.
Within the press package launched by NASA for the primary Sentinel 6 mission in 2020, the primary merchandise in a “have to know checklist” stated the satellite tv for pc would “present data that may assist researchers perceive how local weather change is reshaping Earth’s coastlines – and how briskly that is taking place.”
Within the press package for the Sentinel 6B mission launched Monday, NASA’s first “have to know” merchandise stated merely that “Sentinel-6B will contribute to a multi-decade dataset that’s … key to serving to enhance public security, metropolis planning and defending business and protection pursuits.”
Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, didn’t instantly point out local weather change within the Saturday briefing, focusing as an alternative on the sensible significance of monitoring sea ranges.
“Sentinel 6B is the newest in a line of missions stretching over three a long time, conserving an uninterrupted watch over our planet’s sea floor top, discovering patterns and advancing our understanding of planet Earth,” she stated.
She stated the info supplied by the Sentinel-6 satellites “underpins navigation, search and rescue and industries like business fishing and transport. These measurements type the idea for U.S. flood predictions for coastal infrastructure, actual property, power storage websites and different property alongside our shoreline.”
The information, she continued, will assist scientists “perceive and predict coastal erosion and salt water encroachment into inland provides of water which can be used for agriculture, irrigation in addition to municipal ingesting water.”
No matter interpretation, the launch of Sentinel-6B went off with out a hitch.
After blasting off from launch advanced 4E on the Vandenberg House Drive Base, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage powered the car out of the dense decrease environment, separated and flew itself again to a touchdown pad on the California launch web site.
The higher stage then carried out two firings of its single engine earlier than releasing the two,600-pound Sentinel-6B into an 830-mile-high orbit tilted 66 levels to the equator, the identical orbit utilized by Sentinel-6A and earlier sea level-monitoring spacecraft.
Taking 112 minutes to finish one orbit, the solar-powered satellite tv for pc will fly over places between 66 levels north and south latitude, masking 90 % of the world’s oceans.
Together with measuring sea ranges, the brand new satellite tv for pc additionally will monitor temperature and humidity within the decrease environment in addition to the higher-altitude stratosphere utilizing an instrument that measures atmospheric results on indicators broadcast by navigation satellites.
However the major mission is monitoring Earth’s altering sea ranges.
“The dynamic steadiness that continued earlier than the economic revolution has been upset by the virtually instantaneous combustion of giant reserves of carbon as our society has developed,” Craig Donlon, a European House Company challenge scientist, stated earlier than the primary Sentinel-6 launch in 2020.
“We see proof of this dramatic change in many alternative measurements … however all of them level the identical path: the Earth is warming. And the best indicator of this Earth system imbalance is sea stage rise.”
The Sentinel-6 satellites are the results of a collaboration between NASA, the European House Company, the European Group for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
St. Germain stated NASA’s share of the price for each Sentinel-6 satellites got here to about $500 million. The Europeans contributed an identical quantity.
