This illustration shows the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite in orbit with its solar panels and KaRIn instrument antennas deployed. Credit: CNES
NASA
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is "To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity." Its core values are "safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion."
NASA successfully launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite into Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency – that will survey water on more than 90% of the planet’s surface.
The satellite will measure the height of water in Earth’s freshwater bodies and the ocean, providing insights into how the ocean influences climate change; how a warming world affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs; and how communities can better prepare for disasters, like floods.
Here are five ways that SWOT will change what we know about water on Earth:
1. SWOT will survey nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time.
Water is essential for life on this planet. But it also plays a critical role in storing and moving much of the excess heat and carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions. It influences our weather and climate as well. SWOT will help researchers track Earth’s water budget – where the water is today, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going to be tomorrow. This is key to understanding how water resources are changing, what impact those changes will have on local environments, and how the ocean reacts to and influences climate change.
Set for a December launch, the SWOT satellite will help researchers study such ocean features as currents and eddies in places like the Black Sea closer to the coast than previous ocean-observing satellites. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
2. SWOT will see Earth’s water in higher definition than ever before.
The spacecraft’s science instruments will view the planet’s freshwater bodies and the ocean with unprecedented clarity. SWOT will be able to collect data on ocean features less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across, helping to improve researchers’ understanding of the ocean’s role in climate change. Earth’s seas have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers think that short-lived ocean features, such as fronts and eddies, absorb a lot of that heat – and the extra carbon that produced it.
By providing a high-definition view of freshwater bodies, SWOT will help generate a much more complete picture of Earth’s water budget. Many big rivers remain a mystery to researchers, who can’t outfit them with monitoring instruments for various reasons, including inaccessibility. The spacecraft’s instruments will observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters), viewing them in three dimensions for the first time. Likewise, where ground and satellite technologies currently provide data on only a few thousand of the world’s largest lakes, SWOT will expand that number to over a million lakes larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters).
The SWOT mission will collect information on the height of water in Earth’s lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and oceans. Credit: NASA/<span class=”glossaryLink” aria-describedby=”tt” data-cmtooltip=”
JPL
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center that was established in 1936. It is owned by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network. JPL implements programs in planetary exploration, Earth science, space-based astronomy and technology development, while applying its capabilities to technical and scientific problems of national significance.
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3. The satellite will address some of the most pressing climate change questions of our time.
An important part of predicting our future climate is determining at what point the ocean slows down the absorption of excess heat trapped in the atmosphere and starts releasing it back into the air, where it could accelerate global warming. SWOT will provide crucial information about this global ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, enabling researchers to test and improve climate forecasts. In addition, the satellite will help fill gaps in researchers’ picture of how sea level is changing along coastlines, offering insights that can then be used to improve computer models for sea level rise projections and the forecasting of coastal floods.
4. SWOT data will be used to inform decisions about our daily lives.
Climate change is also accelerating Earth’s water cycle, leading to more volatile precipitation patterns, including torrential downpours and extreme droughts. Some communities around the world will thus experience floods while others suffer droughts. SWOT data will be used to monitor drought conditions in lakes and improve flood forecasts for rivers, providing essential information to water management agencies, disaster preparedness agencies, universities, civil engineers, and others who need to track water in their local areas.
5. This mission is paving the way for future NASA Earth missions while also building on a long-standing international partnership.
With its innovative technology and commitment to engaging a diverse community of people who plan to use the mission’s data, SWOT is laying a path for future Earth-observing missions. Measurements from SWOT – and the tools to support researchers in analyzing the information – will be free and accessible. This will help to foster research and applications activities by a wide range of users, including those who may not usually have the opportunity to access this knowledge.
Such an ambitious mission is possible because of a decades-long collaboration between NASA and CNES that started in the 1980s to monitor Earth’s ocean. This partnership pioneered the use of a space-based instrument called an altimeter to study sea level with the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite in 1992. The NASA-CNES partnership has continued uninterrupted for three decades and has expanded to encompass work with other agencies, including the CSA and the UK Space Agency for SWOT, as well as ESA (European Space Agency), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and the European Commission for the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, which launched in November 2020.
More About the Mission
SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the CSA and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA is providing the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES is providing the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground control segment. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and associated launch services.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
