Satellite to study Earth’s water arrives at launch site

The Floor Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite arrived at Vandenberg Area Pressure Base in California, the place groups will start remaining preparations for the spacecraft’s launch in December on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Area Launch Middle-4 East.

SWOT is the primary satellite mission that may observe almost all water on Earth’s floor, measuring the peak of water within the planet’s lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the ocean. SWOT’s devices will be capable of resolve ocean options like currents and eddies lower than 60 miles (100 kilometers) throughout, lakes and reservoirs bigger than 15 acres (6 hectares), and rivers wider than 330 ft (100 meters) throughout.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California constructed the scientific payload. In June 2021, JPL shipped the payload to France, the place a multinational group built-in the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) and different finely tuned devices with the satellite bus.

On Oct. 16, SWOT arrived at Vandenburg from France aboard a U.S. Air Pressure C-5 Galaxy plane and moved to the Astrotech Area Operations facility to start launch processing. Within the coming weeks, SWOT will endure many steps in preparation for liftoff. Groups should encapsulate the satellite in a protecting payload fairing, mate it to the rocket, and transport it to the launch pad earlier than it is able to rocket into space.

As soon as in orbit, SWOT will accumulate knowledge from the ocean, serving to researchers higher perceive how seawater absorbs atmospheric warmth and carbon, a course of that impacts international temperatures and climate change. This knowledge will even assist researchers higher perceive coastal sea ranges and, finally, how sea floor top will work together with a altering local weather to have an effect on issues like storm surges.

SWOT will even present the primary complete international survey of freshwater lakes, rivers, and reservoirs from space. The satellite will measure the peak of the water in these water bodies, in addition to their surface area, or extent. By serving to observe modifications in water volume over time, the info will higher equip scientists and water useful resource managers to observe how a lot water flows into and out of Earth’s freshwater our bodies.