Jakarta: NASA launched the main instrument for climate research entitled Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) using the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on Thursday, July 14, 2022 evening from the Kennedy Space Center.
Collect The Verge, dust is a strong component of the atmosphere, so NASA is determined to understand it better. These tiny particles drift from deserts and other dry areas, and depending on many different factors, dust can have a cooling or warming effect on our planet.
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This scenario is ongoing around the world, but continues to elude scientists. EMIT chief investigator and Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior research scientist Robert Green said that EMIT studied mineral dust because it is an unknown element at this time.
One of the reasons dust is a mystery is that dust particles come in different colors. For example, dust can be dark red because it contains iron. On the other hand, dust particles containing clay will generally be present in lighter colors.
These lighter colored dust particles will reflect sunlight, and help to cool the Earth. On the opposite side of the spectrum, darker colored dust particles will absorb the Sun’s energy and have a heating effect.
With climate change having raised temperatures to dangerous levels for life on Earth, scientists wanted to know about the ability of dust to help or harm efforts to balance global temperatures.
EMIT is capable of contributing to this, and will use an instrument called the Advanced Imaging Spectrometer to collect more than billions of measurement components over the next year, recording the composition of dust around the world.
To do this, the instrument will measure the spectrum of light reflected from the planet’s surface. This will tell scientists the quantity of dust in the atmosphere that comes from dark or light minerals.
These measurements are expected to help solve the mystery of the cumulative impact dust has on the planet, as well as the cooling or warming effects it produces per region.
EMIT, along with crew and supplies of the science experiment weighs 5,800 pounds or 2630 Kg, and is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, July 16, at 11:20 am ET. The tool will be ready to begin collecting data by the end of July, and NASA is expected to begin sharing it publicly within two months.
(MMI)
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