NASA’s satellite mission to study ocean health, air quality and the human impacts of climate change successfully launched into orbit at 1:33 a.m. ET on Thursday. The Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, Ocean Ecosystem satellite, known as PACE, was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA confirmed that it received a signal from the satellite about five minutes after launch and that the spacecraft was operating as expected.

“I congratulate the PACE team on its successful launch. This new addition to NASA’s fleet of Earth observation satellites will help us learn like never before how particles in our atmosphere and oceans can identify key drivers of global warming,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Assignments like this support the Biden-Harris administration’s climate agenda and help us answer urgent questions about climate change.”

From hundreds of kilometers above Earth, the PACE mission will study the effects of small and often invisible things: microscopic life in water and microscopic particles in the air.

The satellite’s Hyperspectral Ocean Color Instrument will allow researchers to measure oceans and other bodies of water in the spectrum of ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light. This will allow scientists to track the distribution of phytoplankton and determine, for the first time from space, which communities of these organisms are present on a daily global scale. Scientists and coastal resource managers can use the data to help predict the health of fisheries, monitor harmful algal blooms, and identify changes in the marine environment.

The spacecraft also has two polarimetric instruments: the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 and the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration. It will reveal how sunlight interacts with particles in the atmosphere and provide researchers with new information about atmospheric aerosols and cloud properties, as well as air quality at local, regional and global scales.

By combining the instrument and polarimeters, PACE will provide information about ocean-atmosphere interactions and how climate change affects these interactions.

Karen St., director of the Earth Sciences Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “PACE’s observations and science will greatly improve our understanding of the ocean’s role in the climate cycle,” Germain said. “The value of PACE data increases exponentially when we combine it with data and science from our surface water and ocean topography mission, ushering in a new era of ocean science. As an open-source science mission where early adopters are ready to use their research and data, PACE will accelerate our understanding of the Earth system and help NASA “It will help us provide effective science, data and practical applications to help our coastal communities and industry address rapidly evolving problems.”

“It was an honor to work with the PACE team and witness firsthand their dedication and determination to overcome challenges, including a global pandemic, to make this observatory a reality,” said Marjorie Haskell, PACE Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. “The passion and teamwork is matched only by the scientific community’s excitement about the data this new satellite will provide.”

The world’s oceans are responding to climate change in a variety of ways, from rising sea levels to marine heat waves and biodiversity loss. With PACE, researchers will be able to study the effects of climate change on phytoplankton, which play an important role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into their cellular material. These tiny organisms drive larger aquatic and global ecosystems that provide critical resources for food security, recreation, and the economy.

“After 20 years of thinking about this mission, it is exciting to see it finally come to fruition and witness its launch. “I couldn’t be more proud or grateful for our PACE team,” said Jeremy Verdell, PACE Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The possibilities that PACE will offer are so exciting and we’ve yet to see these incredible technologies.” We will be able to use it in ways we did not anticipate. “This is truly a reconnaissance mission.”

NASA’s Launch Services Program, located at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, managed the mission’s launch services. The PACE mission is led by NASA Goddard, which also built and tested the ocean-colored spacecraft and instrument. The Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 was designed and built by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; The Planetary Spectropolarimeter was designed and built by a Dutch consortium led by the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and Airbus Defense and Space Netherlands.