CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is working to launch a mission in February that will help scientists better understand how carbon dioxide reacts with the oceans and atmosphere.
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud Ocean Ecosystem, or what is commonly referred to as the PACE mission, will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The multi-million-dollar observation satellite will be composed of several sensors that will help it measure wavelengths of light, aerosol particles and clouds.
“One of the things that I’m really interested in is the dynamic of ecosystems on land, and how they change over time … With the hyperspectral data available from PACE and OCI we’ll be able to do things like look at changes in leaf-level pigment contents and biochemistry,” Fred Huemmrich, a member of NASA’s PACE team, stated. “Plants are constantly altering themselves to adjust to the environment, and that is something we can see from data on the light that reflects off them.”
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The observation satellite will have three main sensors, all tasked with monitoring light and particles near Earth’s surface.
The primary sensor, known as the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), will measure light wavelengths and could play an important role in climate studies.
“The mission will provide global ocean color, cloud, and aerosol data that will provide unprecedented insights into oceanographic and atmospheric responses to Earth’s changing climate,” NASA stated. “PACE will help scientists investigate the diversity of organisms fueling marine food webs and the U.S. economy, and deliver advanced data products to reduce uncertainties in global climate models and improve our interdisciplinary understanding of the Earth system.”
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After the satellite reaches orbit, which NASA hopes will happen later this month, PACE will scan Earth’s skies every two days.
The data is expected to fill in gaps for models that are used to determine what the climate will be decades and even centuries from now.
In 2015, NASA estimated the mission would cost more than $800 million, a price tag that has surely gone up after facing years of delays.