A NASA-led international satellite mission was set for blastoff from Southern California early on Thursday on a major Earth science project to conduct a comprehensive survey of the world's oceans, lakes and rivers for the first time.
The advanced radar SWOT satellite, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography and designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, is seen in an artist's rendition created in February 2015. NASA/Handout via REUTERS
A Falcon 9 rocket, owned and operated by billionaire Elon Musk's commercial launch company SpaceX, was set to liftoff before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base, about 170 miles northwest of Los Angeles, to carry SWOT into orbit.Nearly 20 years in development, SWOT incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that scientists say will collect height-surface measurements of oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers in high-definition detail over 90% of the globe.
"It's really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet's surface," said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington, who also leads NASA's sea-level change team. Studying the mechanism by which that happens will help climate scientists answer a key question: "What is the turning point at which oceans start releasing, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, rather than limiting it," said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT's program scientist at NASA in Washington.
Freshwater bodies are another key focus SWOT, equipped to observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet , as well as more than 1 million lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres .
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