New Satellite Launches To Map Nearly All Of The World’s Oceans, Rivers - December 19, 2022 at 01:19AM

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Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Thales Alenia Space

A new US-French satellite recently headed into orbit, and it’s taking on a gargantuan task: mapping nearly all of the world’s oceans, rivers, and lakes.

Launched from a SpaceX rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will aid scientists in their study of climate change, and the worsening droughts, flooding, and coastal erosion that has come with the crisis.

According to the Associated Press, NASA Program Manager Nadya Vinogradova-Shiffer has called the successful launch “a pivotal moment,” promising that we would soon be able to “see Earth’s water like we’ve never before.”

SWOT, roughly the same size as a standard SUV, will measure the height of water over 90% of the entire planet’s surface, thereby allowing scientists to track the flow of the world’s water bodies and potentially identify high-risk regions.

In addition to that, the satellite will help survey millions of lakes and over 1.3 million miles of rivers, tracing each one from headwater to mouth via radar pulses. The signals will then bounce back to the machine’s antennas which sit on the end of a 33-foot boom.

Previously, NASA’s fleet of 30 satellites was not able to track the more minute features of water, such as the currents and eddies measuring less than 13 miles across, or which parts of the ocean see waters of varying temperatures merge.

More importantly, SWOT will help reveal the location and speed of rising sea levels and shifting coastlines throughout the globe, which could lead to measures that may help prevent the loss of lives and property.

The satellite will traverse the area of the globe between the Arctic and Antarctic once every three weeks for three years, overseeing the Earth from more than 550 miles away in orbit.

Both NASA and the French Space Agency contributed US$1.2 billion to the project, along with some help from Britain and Canada, and it took 20 years to come to life.

As Laurie Leshin, Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put it, despite the agency’s missions to the Moon and Mars, Earth is still the planet to “care most about,” and SWOT will help researchers do just that.

[via Associated Press and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, cover image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Thales Alenia Space]