Every day, researchers and scientists around the world work to understand the impacts climate will have on our planet, observing from every perspective, including space.
"It’s basically a giant laser pointer in space, but it’s not just one laser pointer, there’s forty of them in space," Fricker said."These 40 laser pointers are distributed through strips that are 400 feet wide and there’s five of them. They basically map the earth in these five ribbons, giving us the height of the earth and the shape and structure of the canopy and the vegetation canopy as well.
Fricker says right now, there isn't a lot of data with the current instruments that map over these regions. It's because the orbits are laid down differently.Meantime, Gille's mission, called Odysea tracks the interaction of currents and winds using a Doppler scatterometer. She says while there's an aircraft version of the instrument, this would be the first time it would be on a satellite.
”Odysea will provide satellite winds at a time of day when we get no satellite wind products, so it will fill a complete gap in the cycle of the time of day, it’ll give us a better view of the evolution of storms and it will also give us the currents at the same time," Gille said.