Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Unlike its various missions into a deep, unknown space and looking for mystery Planets, NASA is attempting to explore its expertise in the well-being of its own Planet.

When the World is looking for a better change, every individual as well as organization is attempting to save the planet from deteriorating further.

The reputed space agency NASA intends to become a major player in studying Earth and contributing towards greater understanding of dynamics of Climate change.

With forward action being planned by Biden Administration in the wake of Pandemic and revivalist agenda of US, NASA hopes to leave no stone unturned in fighting the evil.

Biden made clear that climate is a priority. There’s a clear role for NASA to play in that,” explains an Official.

How NASA aims to do all that?

NASA has signaled to appoint its first climate adviser under US Climate Policy for ramping up its work on key missions including the study of Earth’s changing climate.

NASA’s entire Earth-fleet

The demand for actionable information is going to increase pretty dramatically over the next decade or two”, NASA’s Earth division head explains.

Landsat program by NASA is the longest running earth observation program that provides continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence since. The most recent one in the series was Landsat 8 launched in 2013.

Where there is data, there is possible way. Monitoring the change is a pre-requisite to estimate the amount of efforts required.

Many a times, in order to meet the harsh demands of space travel, Scientists tend to reduce greenhouse gases, discover and improve alternative energy sources, and increase our understanding of the causes and effects of climate change.

For example, Nasa introduced MOXIE technology to capture Martian carbon dioxide to convert it into carbon and oxygen for life support as well as a fuel for journey back home.

NASA has continued working with industry partners to improve airplane efficiency with technologies like all-electric flight, supercritical wing etc.

NASA’s annual budget on Earth sciences usually capture around $2 billion and that has been stagnant for long. An additional funding has been proposed “to initiate the next generation of Earth-observing satellites to study pressing climate science questions”.

To put money efficiently into technologies yet work more on Earth, NASA has been dealing and working together with Corporates like SpaceX.

For instance, the agency has a setup in place to buy Earth-observation data from satellite companies and use the information available for NASA-funded researchers, to complement measurements from government satellites.

Is Monitoring Earth something new?

History of Earth observation has its origin back in 1960 upon the launch of TIROS-1 satellite by NASA to monitor the weather from space.

Then on, NASA has kept monitoring the receding Ice-sheets, Carbon-di-oxide and methane emissions as well as rising sea levels, at times in collaboration with other Organizations like NOAA(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

These studies began in 2002 to track ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica, along with German partners while sea-levels are monitored with French partners.

A US-Canadian-French-UK partnership spacecraft in an upcoming mission, will survey the freshwater resources and ocean currents on the face of Earth.

NASA is anticipating big in Climate data and its work has been fundamental in understanding and deriving the Climate-modelling systems.

It further intends to launch a series of spacecrafts that will measure various aspects of global warming, ranging from shifts in clouds and precipitation to changes in Earth’s mass as the groundwater dries up.

How NASA worked for Climate under reluctant Trump regime?

Congress came to its rescue every time the Trump administration tried to downplay and cancel major NASA Earth-science missions.

NASA averted most of these threats by keeping most of its climate-change and Earth-science researches below the radar of Trump officials. It was difficult but not impossible.

The Big Policy Change now. “If you’re going to make policy related to scientific questions, you need to have science at the table,” explains a NASA Climate modeler.

You can’t mitigate climate change unless you measure it, and that’s NASA’s expertise”. Policy change is anyday required to implement the trickle-down effect needed in the long run along with another resource, finance.

NASA has, with its incoming political team, been involved in a number of discussions at various stages,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator of science.

The discussions take time, just as the process of setting policy and fund raising.

NASA’s action against Pollution:

Observational data has been collated from the CALIPSO and Cloudsat satellites to investigate the impacts of smoke and pollution on clouds, particularly the deep convective clouds.

Study explains that smoky air makes it harder for these clouds to grow while Pollution helps them to grow, but only if the pollution isn’t too heavy. Extreme pollution is likely to inhibit and finish cloud growth.

NASA is about to turn 60 this year in October. We hope that with its increasing age, it strives to provide more age to this planet too. Afterall, everyone has abundant healing touch to offer to this ailing Planet.

By Alaina Ali Beg

I am a lover of all arts and therefore can dream myself in all places where the World takes me. I am an avid animal lover and firmly believes that Nature is the true sorcerer.