NASA has selected Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to launch its Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission.
The project has an estimated cost of US$112 million and is expected to launch by the year 2021 with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The cost of the project includes all aspects of development and operations such as the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration and tracking, data and telemetry support.
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The project aims to survey the surface water of the earth and at least 90% of the planet, collecting detailed measurements of the effects of climate change and how water bodies on Earth change over time.
It will study the Earth's lakes, rivers, reservoirs and oceans, twice every 21 days to aid in freshwater management around the world and improve ocean circulation models and weather and climate predictions.
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The SWOT spacecraft will be jointly developed and managed by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).
NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service. The SWOT Project office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages spacecraft development for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
In September, 2016 PTI published a video showing the moment that Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket exploded on its launch pad in Florida, which was designed through the vision of Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg to provide Internet for isolated and impoverished African communities.
