NASA has launched a tool – called “EMIT– It may help researchers at the International Space Station solve a climatic puzzle that has baffled scientists, It will help investigate the source of the mineral dust on Earth’s surface, and was launched aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Thursday night from the Kennedy Space Center.
Dust is a huge force in the atmosphere, which is why NASA decided to understand it better. These tiny particles from deserts and other arid regions can have a cooling or warming effect on our planet, depending on many different factors as well.
Dust affects climate change?
Robert Greene, Principal Investigator at The project The chief researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during a press conference on July 13, said, “The instrument is studying mineral dust because it is an element that is not currently known. It will not only study how hot or cold it is, but whether the dust is heating or cooling, which is still an issue.”
One of the reasons dust is such a mystery is that the dust particles come in different colours, it can be dark red because it contains iron. On the other hand, dust particles containing clay are usually lighter in colour.
The website “The Verge” stated that the lighter dust particles reflect sunlight, which helps to cool the planet, while the darker dust particles actually absorb the sun’s energy and have the opposite effect, which may negatively affect climate change on Earth, so scientists want to know whether the dust Helps or harms efforts to stabilize global temperatures.
How will you help?EMIT“ “NASA”?
An instrument called the Advanced Imaging Spectrometer will be used to collect more than a billion gauges over the next year and record dust composition around the world. To do this, the instrument will actually measure the spectrum of light reflected from the surface of our planet, which will tell scientists how much dust in the atmosphere comes from dark metals or light metals, in the hope that this will finally solve the mystery of the cumulative effect of dust on the planet, as well as the effects of heating. or cooling that may occur from one area to another.
Answering these questions is critical to building better climate models that researchers use to try to understand what climate change may have in store for us in the future.
“We wanted to send,” Green added.EMIT“Because of a gap in our knowledge, it is about climate now and in the future, and this will allow us to have better information to adapt to climate change.”
In addition to climate change, data fromEMIT“ Also to study other phenomena on Earth affected by dust, dust can travel thousands of miles from North Africa to the Amazon rainforest, where it provides nutrients to plants. Dust also plays a role in cloud formation, air quality, and even water availability. When it lands on ice, it can accelerate its melting.
The International Space Station’s orbit around the planet is ideal for measuring dust, because it orbits some of the most arid regions of Earth, deserts being the source of most of the dust traveling around the world.
scheduled to arrive”EMIT“ To the International Space Station today, Saturday, July 16, at about an hour 6:20 It should be ready to start collecting data by the end of the month, which NASA expects to start sharing it publicly in about two months.