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NASA To Launch Its First-Ever Worldwide Water Survey

The launch of NASA international satellite effort to study the world’s oceans, lakes, and rivers was set for Thursday morning from Southern California.

The highly advanced radar satellite is known as SWOT, which stands for Surface Water and Ocean Topography.

NASA Water Survey

Its purpose is to provide researchers with a unique perspective on the mechanisms and effects of climate change by providing a panoramic view of the vital fluid that covers 70% of the world.

The Falcon 9 rocket that will put SWOT into orbit belongs to Elon Musk, who also owns the commercial launch business SpaceX, and will lift off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base roughly 275 kilometers (or 170 miles) northwest of Los Angeles on Thursday morning before sunrise.

Read more: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sends Lunar Lander and Rover to the moon

NASA-SWOT-Space-Elon Musk-The Falcon 9
The launch of a NASA-led international satellite effort to study the world’s oceans, lakes, and rivers was set for Thursday morning from Southern California.

Searching For The Crossing Point Of The Ocean

Over 90% of the extra heat trapped in Earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, according to estimates.

Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT’s program scientist at NASA in Washington, explains that understanding the mechanism by which this occurs will help climate scientists answer a crucial question: at what point do the oceans stop absorbing heat from the atmosphere and instead start releasing large amounts of heat, thereby accelerating global warming rather than slowing it down?

SWOT analysis allows us to go behind the surface and observe how rising seas are influencing our shores.

SWOT also pays close attention to freshwater bodies, monitoring over a million lakes and reservoirs greater than 15 acres and the length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) (62,500 square meters).

According to Tamlin Pavelsky, NASA’s SWOT freshwater scientific lead, gathering this information is like taking the pulse of the world’s water system, so we’ll be able to see when it’s racing and we’ll be able to see when it’s slow.

The radar sensor on board SWOT uses the so-called Ka-band frequency of the microwave spectrum, which enables scans to see through clouds and darkness across large areas of the planet. Regardless of the time of day or the weather, scientists may now swiftly and precisely map their findings across vast regions in two dimensions.

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