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The first of $ 2 billion from NASA’s European project to accurately measure sea level, a major consequence of global warming, orbited the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California on Saturday.
By taking radar beams that penetrate the clouds to take time to jump out of the ocean below 830 miles, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freelich satellite can track with an accuracy of less than half an inch above sea level. Heating for a long time.
It is named after the late director of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, ”said Josh Willis, a project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “In five years we will introduce its successor, the Sentinel-6B.”
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“This is very important for meteorologists because it means looking at the oceans for 10 years,” he said. “For the first time we can build two in a row so that we can throw them back and extend the record far beyond what we have achieved so far.”
The satellite’s Falcon 9 rocket came to life at 12:17 p.m., fired from the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles, and tilted 66 degrees south of the equator.
This is the California rocket maker’s 22nd Falcon 9 aircraft so far this year and the 103rd aircraft, including three Falcon triple-core heavy thrusters. This is the first release of Vandenberg’s Falcon 9 since June 2019.
After gaining strength through the dense lower atmosphere, the first stage fell off and flew to a landing near the launch pad, SpaceX’s 66th successful recovery stage, the fourth stage in California.
In the second phase, Sentinel-6 Michael Freelich operated two engines to put the satellite into orbit.
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The Sentinel-6 satellites will continue through a decade of effort by NASA, the European Space Agency, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Climate Satellites, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor sea level for the past 30 years.
With the launch of Sentinel-6 Michael Freelich and Sentinel-6B, these measurements will extend into the 2030s. Climate researchers are alarmed by the data collected so far.
“You can see the rate of increase is increasing,” Willis said. “So in the 1990s the sea level rose two millimeters a year. In the 2000s it was about three millimeters per year. Now it is close to four or five millimeters per year ”.
Spacex
90% of the heat trapped in the greenhouse warms the world’s oceans.
“So the oceans are warming, the water is expanding, it is reaching a third above sea level, and the rest of the glaciers and glaciers are reacting to the warmer atmosphere,” Willis said. “So these missions give us the most important criteria for measuring climate change and how it works on the planet.”
In addition to measuring sea level around the planet, the new satellite will monitor the temperature and humidity of the lower atmosphere and the high-altitude stratosphere using a device that measures atmospheric influence on signals transmitted by navigation satellites.
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The main mission is to monitor the sea level in 90% of the world’s oceans.
“As our society develops the dynamic equilibrium that existed before the Industrial Revolution, large carbon pools are altered almost instantly when burning,” said Craig Donlon, a project scientist at the European Space Agency.
“We see evidence of this dramatic change on different scales… but they all point in the same direction: the earth is warming. The greatest indicator of the imbalance of this planet is the rise in sea level. “
