Europe's space ambitions

The Jason satellite

With NASA interstellar plans being scrapped by President Obama's new budget cuts, the ball has been passed to Europe to continue space projects... albeit not on the scale of the Americans.

Instead of returning to the Moon or planning manned missions to Mars, Europe has committed itself to instead building the next Jason altimeter spacecraft in order to monitor the behaviour of the world's oceans.

While lacking the immediate 'sexiness' of a lunar mission or an inter-planetary project, the Jason series of satellites have been vital in measuring the steady rise of the global sea level, currently increasing by about 3mm per year.

Continental commitment

There had initially been concern that European nations would be unable to commit money to the project which, if cancelled, would fail to maintain an 18-year record of the ocean's height. However, Eumetsat, which looks and maintains Europe's meteorological satellites, has said that its member states have now committed to their 25 percent share of the 252 million euro (US$380 million) project.

Despite European funding however, money is still coming from the US for the project.

The new satellite is scheduled to launch in 2013 which will allow plenty of time for it to cross-check its data in orbit with the current Jason-2 observatory. Only by flying the pair in tandem for a period of months can scientists minimise calibration errors between the two satellites' data sets.

Why is Jason so important?

Whilst this might seen like just another satellite mission, the information provided by the Jason satellite gives scientists the ability to look at how ocean movement affects the planet in the long and short term.

Data gives clues to water temperature and salinity and when combined with gravity information, also indicates direction and speed. As the seas store a lot of heat and energy from the sun, how they interact with the atmosphere affects with the planet's weather and climate system.

As such, one of Jason's main responsibilities is monitoring the El Nino phenomenon, which sees an eastward shift in warm water across the central Pacific Ocean. El Nino has a profound influence on global weather systems, altering precipitation patterns often in an alarming and dramatic manner.

Relevant articles:

Boldly going nowhere? US space plans scrapped | Space: The Final Junkyard | When vision and budget collide

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: