Satellite launched to study climate change

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched into orbit this morning from northern Russia, as part of ESA's Earth Explorer programme.

With its 69 detectors and 8-metre span, SMOS is the first ever satellite to map sea surface salinity and to monitor soil moisture on a global scale – two key climate change variables.

SMOS will be gathering data about climate change over the next three years at an altitude of some 760 kilometres, informing scientists with better weather forecasts and the likelihood of extreme weather events.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s director general, said that the launch would “provide Europe with new tools to better understand our planet and climate change.”

Witnessing the launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, Volker Liebig, ESA’s director of Earth Observation Programmes, said: "The data collected by SMOS will complement measurements already performed on the ground and at sea to monitor water exchanges on a global scale. Since these exchanges – most of which occur in remote areas – directly affect the weather, they are of paramount importance to meteorologists.

"Moreover, salinity is one of the drivers for the Thermohaline Circulation, the large network of currents that steers heat exchanges within the oceans on a global scale, and its survey has long been awaited by climatologists who try to predict the long-term effects of today’s climate change," Liebig added.

The 658-kilogramme satellite, developed by ESA in cooperation with France’s CNES and Spain’s Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial, launched atop a Russian Rockot launcher at 01:50 (local time) this morning. 70 minutes after launch, SMOS successfully separated from the Rockot’s Breeze-KM upper stage.

SMOS is the second satellite launched under the Earth Explorer programme. It follows the Gravity and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), also launched on a Rockot, in March 2009.

More Earth Explorers are due to go into orbit. Cryosat-2, which will measure the thickness of the ice sheets, is due for launch in February 2010. It will be followed by ADM-Aeolus to study atmospheric dynamics and the Swarm mission to monitor the weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field, in 2011, as well as by the EarthCARE mission on clouds and aerosols in 2013.