Early Wednesday morning, at 00:20 h (Spanish peninsula time), a Falcon 9 rocket from Space X successfully put the EarthCARE satellite into orbit from the Vandenberg space base in California, USA, where it was 15:20 h on Tuesday. Just an hour after the launch, a tracking station in South Africa confirmed that the satellite was safely in orbit around Earth.
EarthCARE (Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) is a joint project of the European and Japanese space agencies (ESA and JAXA). This satellite aims to change our understanding of how clouds and aerosols affect the climate through the use of four advanced instruments: a cloud profile radar, an atmospheric lidar, a broadband radiometer, and a multispectral imager.
The satellite will analyze the role that clouds and aerosols, tiny atmospheric particles, play in reflecting solar radiation back into space, contributing to the cooling of the atmosphere, as well as in capturing the infrared radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface, which is associated with atmospheric warming. This type of information is key in the current context of the climate crisis.
Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programs at ESA, highlighted the importance of this mission: “EarthCARE is the most complex of ESA’s research missions to date. The mission comes at a critical time when advancing our scientific knowledge is more important than ever to understand and address climate change.”
Eiichi Tomita, project director of JAXA’s cloud analysis radar, stated: “Improving the accuracy of global climate models using EarthCARE data will allow us to better predict future climate and, therefore, take necessary reduction measures. JAXA provides the world’s first radar that can measure the speed of upward and downward flow within clouds.”
The ‘Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer’ will map vertical profiles of natural and artificial aerosols, document the distribution of water droplets and ice crystals and how they are transported in clouds, and provide essential data to improve climate warming modeling and weather prediction. Aerosols influence the life cycle of clouds, indirectly affecting how they emit radiation, so their measurement will allow a better understanding of Earth’s energy balance.
The satellite has been designed and built by a consortium of over 75 companies under the leadership of Airbus as the main contractor, collaborating with numerous research centers in Europe and Japan. According to Alain Fauré, head of Space Systems at Airbus, “EarthCARE is ESA’s largest and most complex Earth explorer, a flagship mission whose data will help improve the accuracy and reliability of numerical climate and weather prediction models.”
One of the key instruments, the ATLID atmospheric lidar, has also been manufactured by Airbus, including electronic units provided from its headquarters in Tres Cantos, Madrid. This device emits a laser pulse to analyze the light reflected by the different atmospheric layers, allowing for detailed vertical profiles of aerosols.
Currently, the satellite is being controlled from ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Over the next few months, time will be dedicated to carefully checking and calibrating the mission during its start-up phase. EarthCARE will operate in a 400 km polar sun-synchronous orbit, crossing the equator in the early afternoon to optimize daylight conditions. Weighing 2.3 tons and measuring 18 meters in length, the satellite will be in service for at least three years.
Source: MiMub in Spanish
