A satellite that will study rising sea levels on Earth and their links to global climate change is scheduled for launch early Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Jason 2 is a collaboration between NASA and the French Space Agency (CNES), as well as NOAA and the European Meteorological Satellite Organization (EUMETSAT).
"I'm really happy to say the spacecraft is on the pad ... and ready to go," said Parag Vaze, OSTM/Jason 2 Project Manager. "We're just waiting for the 20th to come along now."
NASA weather forecasters predict a mostly favorable forecast for the first launch attempt, and currently give the mission an 80 percent chance of launching on the first try.
The 433 million U.S. dollar spacecraft is intended to pursue a joint mission along with the Jason 1 satellite already in orbit. That craft was launched in 2001 and has been monitoring Earth's seas ever since. Together the two satellites should be able to cover twice the area that Jason 1 could while operating alone.
"The key objective of this mission is to measure the sea surface height on a global basis and of course to do it very, very accurately," said Vaze.
The spacecraft is designed to use onboard instruments to fire small pulses of light down to Earth and measure the time it takes for them to return, to deduce the distance between the satellite and the ocean surface to within a few centimeters.
By creating a topographical map of Earth's oceans in this way, the spacecraft aims to gather data about global sea levels, the speed and direction of ocean currents and the heat stored in the ocean. The data could also be used to improve the accuracy of hurricane predictions, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Source: Xinhua/Agencies
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