A NASA-led international satellite mission was set for blastoff from Southern California early on Thursday on a major Earth science project to conduct a comprehensive survey of the world's oceans, lakes and rivers for the first time.
Dubbed SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, the advanced radar satellite is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of the life-giving fluid covering 70% of the planet, shedding new light on the mechanics and consequences of climate change.
The satellite was designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles. Developed by the U.S. space agency in collaboration with its counterparts in France and Canada, SWOT was one of 15 missions listed by the National Research Council as projects NASA should undertake in the coming decade.
Studying the mechanism by which that happens will help climate scientists answer a key question: "What is the turning point at which oceans start releasing, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, rather than limiting it," said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT's program scientist at NASA in Washington.
Freshwater bodies are another key focus SWOT, equipped to observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet , as well as more than 1 million lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres .
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