The refueling capsule Dragon of SpaceXcarrying more than 1,500 kilograms of scientific experiments, crew supplies and other cargo, it is already on its way to International Space Station (ISSfor its acronym in English) after its launch this Friday at 2:44 am (Spanish peninsular time) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA).
The spacecraft was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of Elon Musk’s company’s 25th commercial resupply services mission to the PAN. It is scheduled to autonomously dock at the ISS on Saturday and remain there for about a month.
New experiments arriving at the space station include some to study the effects of microgravity on the aging immune system, soil microbial communities, cell-free protein production, and off-Earth concrete fabrication, as well as a meteorological study of high school students. .
EMIT project on mineral dust
But the star experiment is HeyInvestigation of Sources of Mineral Dust on the Earth’s Surface (EMITfor its acronym in English), developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from NASA. Incorporates a imaging spectrometer to measure the mineral composition of dust in arid regions of our planet.
Engineers and technicians at the JPL lab assemble the EMIT’s components, including its telescope, its imaging spectrometer, and its motherboard, which contains its electronics. / NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mineral dust that disperses in the air can travel long distances and affect Earth’s climate, climate and vegetation, among other factors. For example, one that contains dark minerals that absorb sunlight can warm an area, while the light-colored one can cool it down.
When it blows, it also affects air quality, land surface conditions – such as the rate at which snow melts – and the health of phytoplankton in the ocean.
The investigation will collect images for a year generate maps of the mineral composition in the regions of the Earth that produce this dust. The resulting mapping could advance our understanding of its effects on human populations, now and in the future.
The dusty wind from northwest Africa blows over the Canary Islands. / NASA Earth Observatory
Participation of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Dust aerosols created by wind erosion of arid surfaces are among the biggest contributors to the global particulate load in the atmosphere, determining climate effects over large areas of the Earth. Carlos Perez Garcia-Pandoresearcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) participating in the mission.
EMIT can trigger a paradigm shift by producing a surface mineralogy database that improves analyzes of mineralogical atlases used in climate models
These effects on the planet’s climate are critically dependent on regional variations in dust mineral composition, which are not well represented in current Earth system models.
“In this context, the EMIT project has the potential to trigger a paradigm shift, allowing for the production of an accurate and near-global database of surface mineralogy that improves the analyzes that underpin the current mineralogical atlases used in the modelling, which calculate climate effects. By carefully measuring the minerals that make up dust, EMIT will help answer whether dust aerosols warm or cool the atmosphere, as well as how this might change in future climate scenarios,” concludes García-Pando.