Ground-breaking NASA mission to study one of Earth's most important resources to be launched today

On Thursday, the first comprehensive survey of the Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers will blast off from Southern California.

The NASA-led mission being launched in collaboration with Elon Musk's SpaceX has been dubbed SWOT, or Surface Water and Ocean Topography and is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of around 70 per cent of the Earth's surface.

SWOT, one of the 15 missions listed by the National Research Council as projects the American space agency should undertake in the coming decade, has been designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with French and Canadian counterparts.

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It will offer a fresh ground-breaking view of one of our most vital resources: the planet's water bodies and shed new light on the mechanisms of how climate change is affecting them.

To carry SWOT into orbit Billionaire Musk's SpaceX Falcon9 rocket was set to take off before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base.

SWOT as per Reuters has been in development for over 20 years. It incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that according to scientists will collect height-surface measurements of water bodies (oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers) in high-definition detail over 90 per cent of the globe.

It is equipped with Ka-band frequency of microwave spectrum that will allow scanning regardless of cloud cover or darkness and thus will enable 2D dimensions irrespective of weather or time of day.

The project will also help enhance ocean circulation models, bolster weather and climate forecasts, and contribute to managing scarce freshwater supplies in drought-stricken regions.

As per the plan, the satellite will gather data over several months. The data will be compiled from sweeps that'll be done twice every 21 days.

"It's really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet's surface," said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington.

Collecting such data as per NASA's SWOT freshwater science lead, Tamlin Pavelsky, was akin to "taking the pulse of the world's water system, so we'll be able to see when it's racing and we'll be able to see when it's slow."

We know that the planet's oceans absorb an estimated 90 per cent r more of the excess heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere. SWOT aims to explore how the heat that is resultant of human activities and the greenhouse gas emissions generated from them, impacts climate change and moderates global temperatures.

(With inputs from agencies)

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