A rocket carrying a sophisticated satellite blasted off late Tuesday from California on a mission to investigate what role clouds could play in the fight against climate change. The EarthCARE orbiter, the result of collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan’s JAXA space agency, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg air base at 3:20 pm local time (2220 GMT). “The holddown clamps have released Falcon 9 and we have begun our flight,” ESA said on its web site.
The two-tonne satellite will orbit nearly 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth for three years. “Tonight’s launch is a reminder that space is not only about exploring distant galaxies and planets. It is about understanding our beautiful but fragile Earth,” ESA Director Josef Aschbacher said in a video posted Tuesday on social media.
Clouds - from cumulus and cirrus to cumulonimbus - are a varied and complicated phenomenon. Their composition depends on where they are located in the troposphere, Earth’s lowest layer of atmosphere, explained Dominique Gillieron, head of the ESA’s Earth observation projects department. “They are one of the main contributors to how the climate changes - and one of the least understood,” Gillieron told AFP.
The troposphere starts at around eight kilometers (five miles) above the polar regions, but near the equator it begins at around 18 kilometers (11 miles) up. This means that clouds affect the climate differently depending on their altit.