Images from NASA’s Salt-Sensing Satellite
A year ago, NASA and Argentina’s national space agency collaborated on a mission to measure salt concentrations in the world’s oceans. Since the fall, the Aquarius satellite has been transmitting data that will give scientists a better understanding of climate patterns, ocean circulation and rainfall. The principal investigator for the mission is Gary Lagerloef of Seattle-based Earth and Space Research, which specializes in oceanographic research. In the weeks before the satellite launched, Lagerloef told me that scientists lacked comprehensive data on ocean salinity. “There are direct connections between what happens over the ocean and what happens on land,” he said. “The ocean is a vast, but poorly understood, part of the water cycle.”
