NASA finally launches PACE Earth science satellite

NASA has successfully launched PACE, its latest near-billion-dollar climate-monitoring satellite that will study how microscopic plankton and aerosol particles are impacted by global warming. Launched on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem …

[jmch]

Agenda

"Missions like this are supporting the Biden-Harris Administration's climate agenda and helping us answer urgent questions about our changing climate."

I do know that NASA etc funding is to a large extent determined by politicians, and so a certain extent of sucking up is inevitable, however I would like to see a bit more "this will give us better answers to important scientific questions" and a bit less "whoever-whoever's administration's agenda".

But in any case, good job and hopefully many years of good science to come

[Version 1.0]

Re: Agenda

Monitoring the water on our planet is going to be very useful, essentially water initially helped the creation of life after the planet stabilized in the early years. I expect that NASA's interest is that seeing how life is on our planet will lead NASA to being able to look at other planets that have the potential of life. After reading Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" book about our creation and his highly technical "Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA" book too, I believe that they also define how life has probably been created to exist throughout the Universe - "life" not just aliens.

So we have the potential of being miraculous life!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Agenda

"essentially water initially helped the creation of life after the planet stabilized in the early years."

Yes, and then some bloody upstart mutant came along and started spreading itself everywhere, sucking up all that lovely carbon dioxide, pumping out highly corrosive and poisonous oxygen, almost entirely destroying the whole ecosystem and creating another ecosystem in it's own image!

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Agenda

I really hated the "Biden-Harris Administration's climate agenda" phrase too. It sound like the satellite was launched to provide democrat policy based evidence instead of to provide evidence of reality that should be used to select policy. Jim Bridenstine* was shockingly competent considering who appointed him. Bill Nelson is just about meeting my expectations as a former senator for Boeing.

(* Just noticed Bridenstine and Bridenstein are both common on the internet)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Agenda

"I do know that NASA etc funding is to a large extent determined by politicians,"

Yes, and apart from anything else, missions like this don't usually just "happen" in a very few years. Most likely this mission was planned and started development under Trump or Obama or even earlier and has almost nothing to do with Bidens administration anyway. As you say, keep politics out of it :-)

[ldo]

Re: started development under Trump or Obama

The Trump administration tried several times to kill it.