Edhat Staff
Update by the edhat staff
December 16, 2022
On Friday, December 16 at 3:46 a.m., SpaceX launched NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
SWOT is an internationally developed mission to conduct the first global survey of Earth’s surface water. It aims to provide a new understanding of the ocean’s role in climate change and improve the data humanity relies upon for fresh water management.
To learn more about NASA’s science missions, visit science.nasa.gov.
This was the sixth launch and landing of this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, and two Starlink missions.
Deployment of SWOT confirmed pic.twitter.com/6OaxYEpezf
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 16, 2022
Update by the edhat staff
December 15, 2022
SpaceX has rescheduled its rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base to early Friday morning.
The launch is now scheduled for December 16 at 3:46:47 a.m. PST.
By the edhat staff
December 14, 2022
SpaceX is planning for an early Thursday morning rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off at 3:56 a.m. and head in the southwest direction. Weather permitting, a large orange flame might be seen as far north as Monterey and as far south as Long Beach, but easily spotted form the South Coast.
The rocket will carry the U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite (SWOT). In a press release, NASA stated it “will observe nearly all water on Earth’s surface.”
“Its measurements of fresh water and the ocean will help researchers address some of the most pressing climate questions of our time and help communities prepare for a warming world. Making this possible is a scientific instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn),” NASA states.
KaRIn will measure the height of water in the ocean, “seeing” features like currents and eddies that are less than 13 miles (20 kilometers) across – up to 10 times smaller than those detectable with other sea level satellites. It will also collect data on lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters) and rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) across.
“For freshwater, this will be a quantum leap in terms of our knowledge,” said Daniel Esteban-Fernandez, KaRIn instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. For example, researchers currently have good data on only a few thousand lakes around the world; SWOT will increase that number to at least a million.
The KaRIn instrument is part of a longstanding collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency.
