NASA is gearing up to launch its latest satellite into space.
PACE, which stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and Earth Ocean Ecosystem Mission, is a satellite that aims to observe the earth.
“This is an incredible satellite that’s actually studying the interaction between pollutants in the atmosphere, the ocean, how they share chemistry, how they share energy,” NASA Scientist Dr. Michelle Thaller said. “Plankton are actually sort of the basis of the food chain. They’re tiny organisms in the ocean, they change the color of the water. We can see that from space.”
She adds that by identifying the plankton, the satellite will be able to tell us more than we’ve ever known about marine food webs and harmful algal blooms that could impact our water safety.
The satellite took nearly twenty years to come to fruition.
“That’s fairly typical for a large satellite like this,” Dr. Thaller said. “You have to be able to propose the mission, figure out what is the science you can do and what is the state of the instruments. It’s interesting because NASA doesn’t itself just decide that. I think a lot of people have this impression that NASA just says ‘Oh, hey! It would be great to have a satellite that would do this.’ Instead, every ten years, the entire scientific establishment around the world puts together a big study called a decadal survey. This particular science was named as a world priority about twenty years ago.”
The satellite launches on Tuesday, February 6th at around 12:30 central time.
Visit https://pace.gsfc.nasa.gov/ for more information.
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