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4 Upcoming NASA Missions to Study Weather and Climate Change
NASA has worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) numerous times to build and launch satellites that track information about the environment for weather prediction and climate research. This year, NASA plans to launch four unique missions each aimed at different aspects of Earth’s environment, including a new NOAA satellite.
NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System-2
The Joint Polar Satellite System-2 will be the second of the latest NOAA weather monitoring satellites. It will orbit the Earth from pole to pole and cross the equator 14 times a day, giving us up-to-date information on the entire globe twice a day. It will take advantage of several onboard instruments to take various measurements. This includes ozone mapping, temperature, pressure, moisture, and readings on atmosphere, land, and sea. In collaboration with NASA, JPSS-2 will launch in September this year, providing data on Earth well into the 2030s.
TROPICS Mission
Led by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, TROPICS is a mission aimed at improved observations of tropical cyclones. It will employ six small satellites to provide rapidly updated data on precipitation, temperature, and humidity. These satellites are very small, no bigger than a loaf of bread…
