Satellite launching to monitor the rise of global sea levels from space

(NASA / Getty Images)

(VANDENBERG, Calif.) An American and European satellite that will track the rise of global sea levels is launching from California on Saturday.

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Vandenberg, CA this Saturday at 9:17 a.m. PST (12:17 p.m. EST). The satellite will be followed by its twin, Sentinel-6B, in 2025.

Both satellites were developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) under the European Commission through its Copernicus program, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, France's National Centre for Space Studies, NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Named after former NASA East Science Division Director Michael Freilich, the two satellites make up the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS. The stated mission of each is to monitor sea levels worldwide.

“Together, the pair is tasked with extending our nearly 30-year-long record of global sea surface height measurements,” NASA said in a prepared statement. “Instruments aboard the satellites will also provide atmospheric data that will improve weather forecasts, climate models, and hurricane tracking.”

Worldwide infrastructure and billions of people in coastal areas are at risk in the coming decades as projected warmer weather drives sea levels up. The satellites will “capture sea level height with unprecedented accuracy” compared to sea level measurements at ground level, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

“If you measure it at sea level, you have one measurement device in Amsterdam and you have a different one in Bangkok and yet another one in Miami,” ESA Director Josef Aschbacher told AP. “But with a satellite, you can compare these measurements globally because it’s the same instrument that flies over all these areas.”

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will be carried into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The satellite will start solar panel deployment after an hour and seven minutes post-launch. It is expected to make the first contact about 25 minutes later.

“We all know that [Earth] is undergoing enormous changes, extremely fast changes and changes we never had before on this planet with a speed and intensity caused, obviously, by humans,” Aschbacher told AP. “And we need to understand how this planet functions for our own survival, for our own future.”

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