NASA announced Last week, both the University of Washington’s STRIVE team and the University of Washington-affiliated EDGE team announced that they had been selected to lead satellite missions to better understand the Earth and improve our ability to predict environmental events and mitigate disasters.

STRIVE and EDGE selected as 4 finalists Selected in May 2024 This will be done as part of the agency’s Earth System Explorer Program, which conducts principal investigator-led space science missions in accordance with the recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2017 Decadal Survey of Earth Sciences and Applications from Space.

NASA said the estimated total cost of each mission, not including launch, will not exceed $355 million, and the mission’s launch date will not be after 2030.

“This was great news. We’ve been working on this concept for several years, and for many of us it’s a dream come true. Being able to observe the atmosphere at such a detailed level is a huge opportunity,” he said. Riot Jagreis a UW professor of atmospheric and climate science who is leading the STRIVE mission.

Stratosphere-tropospheric response due to infrared light Vertical Resolved Light Explorer

make an effortwhich stands for Stratospheric-Troposphere Reaction Using Infrared Vertical Resolved Optical Explorer, investigates the atmospheric region where weather forms and the ozone layer resides, yielding new insights into the temperature and trace gases in the atmosphere that influence aviation, long-distance transport of volcanic smoke, and air pollution.

The STRIVE instrument is compact enough to fit in the trunk of a mid-sized SUV and can make more than 400,000 observations each day. Rather than looking straight down at Earth like other missions, the STRIVE instrument will tilt sideways toward Earth’s surface to capture more detail of the atmosphere.

“With these observations, we will not only be getting measurements of ozone, but of all the chemical species that affect stratospheric ozone,” Jagure said.

The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet rays, is coming back Severe depletion occurred in the early 2000s, but careful monitoring is still required.

STRIVE represents a technological and scientific leap forward that will help researchers understand how air pollution circulates after, for example, wildfires or volcanic eruptions. Importantly, STRIVE also supports weather forecasting efforts beyond the typical 10-day window, giving people time to prepare for extreme weather events.

“If you see something propagating from above, such as a big change in the winds, you’ll see it impacting the surface a few weeks later. Current weather models don’t predict this relationship very well because we don’t really know what’s going on at the stratosphere-troposphere interface,” Jagure added.

The national team includes partners from academia, industry, and federal scientific laboratories. Wang Jun He is the STRIVE Deputy Principal Investigator at the University of Iowa. luke ohman He is a project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Several NASA Goddard scientists are also involved. Other UW members of STRIVE are professors Zhang FuAssistant Professor alex turner and affiliated faculty Kim Dae Hyunall of whom are affiliated with the UW School of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences.

Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer

corneror Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer, uses lasers to observe changes in the three-dimensional structure of the Earth’s surface, such as forests, glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice. benjamin smithSenior Principal Physicist, tyler satterleeSenior Research Fellow at the University of California and the University of California Applied Physics Laboratory and david sheenis a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and part of the EDGE team led by: helen amanda fricker He received his Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

EDGE will be the world’s first satellite imaging laser altimeter system, according to Press release from UCSD. The system captures details of the Earth’s surface in high resolution by firing laser pulses into the Earth and recording the time it takes for the pulses to return, making more than 150,000 measurements every second. It can also precisely track changes in surface elevation over time and understand how ice sheets and glaciers are responding to climate change on seasonal and long-term timescales.

“What’s really interesting about EDGE is the level of detail it measures. Older laser altimeter measurements sample a coarse grid of points on the ground, but with EDGE data we can see individual trees around Seattle or tiny cracks in glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. It’s often the microscopic processes that determine how large-scale systems change,” Smith said.

Although the effort focuses on the polar regions, forests and coastlines, Sheen said EDGE is “any mission.”

“These accurate surface elevation change measurements are essential for a huge number of urgent scientific and engineering applications,” he added. “EDGE data will impact sea level rise, natural disaster monitoring, water resources and forest management, and wildfire response. This is also a major milestone for the University of Wisconsin, as it formalizes the University’s leadership and involvement in not one, but two NASA Earth observation missions. I am excited to welcome our students to the EDGE team and train the next generation of University of Wisconsin researchers who will accomplish amazing things with EDGE data in the coming decades.”