The U.S. and France collaborate on an ambitions project to study how climate change is altering nearly all of Earth's water
he universe is thought to harbor uncounted worlds that are home to water. The one we know best, of course, is our own, and as of 3:46 a.m. PT this morning, we set about working to know it better still. That was the moment,, that the SWOT satellite blasted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to begin a three year campaign to study the height and health of freshwater bodies and oceans across 90% of the Earth’s surface.
Jointly built by NASA and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales , the French space agency, SWOT will monitor the entire Earth’s surface between 78 degrees north latitude and 78 degrees south latitude—from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle—once every three weeks, sending back about one terabyte of data per day.
The heart of the satellite is a new technology known as a Ka-band radar interferometer . The system bounces radar pulses off of the surface of the water and receives reflections with two antennas on either side of the spacecraft—essentially a stereo image. That configuration allows scientists to measure water height across two swaths of water at a time, each measuring 50 km across.
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