Later This Week, ESA May Launch EARTHCare To More Closely Study Aerosols' Role -- In Heating And Cooling The Atmosphere...

It may yet slip to the first week of June, depending on lots of factors, but it could come as early as May 28, 2024.

This is the most sophisticated craft esa will place in permanent Earth orbit. [The Europa Clipper we mentioned yesterday, heading deep into space in October, is a more complicated mission, but this will be the apex in permanent Earth orbit, for the near term, technologically speaking -- for esa.] Here's the latest:

. . .ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is getting ready for lift-off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, California, with a target launch date of no earlier than 28 May 2024. Save the date and watch the launch live on ESA WebTV or ESA YouTube.

EarthCARE, the most complex of all of ESA’s Earth Explorer missions, will quantify and reduce the uncertainty about the role that clouds and aerosols play in heating and cooling Earth’s atmosphere -- contributing to our better understanding of climate change. . . .

EarthCARE will, for the first time, measure vertical profiles of cloud particles and aerosols, and their fall speed – providing new insights into interactions between clouds, aerosols and precipitation. It will also register the distribution of water droplets and ice crystals and how they are transported in clouds.

This essential data will improve the accuracy of both cloud development models and their behaviour, composition and interaction with aerosols, as well as improve future climate models and support numerical weather prediction. . . .

Now you know -- with the drenching rains ending here now, and clear azure skies to the West, at sunset. . . smile.

नमस्ते