NASA to Launch 5 New Missions --- to Earth

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Earth will be the focus of a series of new space missions launched by the nation's top space agency in 2014.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans five lift-offs, including two to the International Space Station, designed to test improved ways to monitor the changing Blue Planet.

The missions, say NASA officials, will conduct airborne exploratory campaigns over the earth's poles and hurricanes, develop state-of-the-art sensors and use satellite data and analytical tools to improve methods to prepare for natural disasters, as well as the environmental effects of climate change.

A NASA release explains that satellite, spacecraft and aircraft missions and other research help scientists and policymakers understand and make decisions about critical challenges facing the planet, including rising sea levels, decreasing availability of fresh water and extreme weather events.

Even "as NASA prepares for future missions to an asteroid and Mars," they're focused on Earth right now, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "With five new missions set to launch in 2014, this really is shaping up to be the year of the Earth, and this focus on our home planet will make a significant difference in people's lives around the world."

NASA's first earth science mission this year is the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, a joint satellite project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

With a Feb. 27 launch date from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on a Japanese H-IIA rocket, the GPMCO mission will inaugurate a first-of-its-kind international satellite array that will produce the first nearly-global observations of rainfall and snowfall.

In July, NASA will launch a mission to advance our understanding of carbon dioxide's role in climate change, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which will replace a mission lost in 2009 after a launch vehicle failure.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the OCO-2 will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a Delta II rocket.

Scheduled to blast off in November, NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission will track Earth's water as it retreats into the planet's soil, providing greater insights into water resources around the globe and how the water cycle impacts plant growth and agricultural productivity and weather, particularly in the current age of climate change.

The SMAP will also launch from Vandenberg on a Delta II rocket and will be managed by JPL.

"On our home planet Earth, water is an essential requirement for life and for most human activities. We must understand the details of how water moves within and between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land if we are to predict changes to our climate and the availability of water resources," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington.

"Coupled with data from other ongoing NASA missions that measure sea-surface salinity and that detect changes in underground aquifer levels, with GPM and SMAP we will have unprecedented measurements of our planet's vital water cycle."

Two other earth science missions will be delivered to the ISS this year to measure ocean winds, clouds, and aerosols, NASA said, marking the first use of the orbiting laboratory as an around-the-clock Earth-observing platform.

The new instruments set to be carried to the ISS represent the first of a series of advanced machines that will analyze Earth routinely from the orbiting laboratory.