Today, May 28, a new Earth monitoring project was launched into space.

Today at 6:20 p.m. EDT (2220 GMT or 3:20 p.m. local time in California), a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX launched the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite, or EarthCARE for short, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

SpaceX launched a cluster of its Starlink internet satellites into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida this morning, marking the company’s second launch of the day.

As per the SpaceX mission description, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster involved in this mission has successfully completed seven space missions. Its prior missions included two Starlink missions, the CRS-29 cargo transport to the International Space Station, and the Crew-7 Crew Dragon astronaut launch.

After launching, the rocket touched down safely at Vandenberg around eight minutes later. The upper stage of the Falcon 9 launched EarthCARE into orbit as scheduled, some 2.5 minutes later.

On May 28, 2024, the European-Japanese EarthCARE satellite will launch from the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are working together on the EarthCARE project. The experiment will “examine the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting solar radiation back into space and also in trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface,” according to the European Space Agency.

Ensuring that our planet’s solar radiation balance is understood “is crucial for addressing climate-related issues, and is something that can only be done from space,” stated ESA.

The mission will fly on a different plane but operate at an orbit that is similar in altitude to the International Space Station (250 miles, or 400 kilometers): EarthCARE will fly a sun-synchronous polar orbit that crosses the equator at local early afternoon, when sunlight is highest in the area, in place of the more equatorial-focused International Space Station (ISS).

In order to observe how aerosol molecules and cloud particles interact with precipitation and how rapidly they fall to Earth, the mission will look down at these suspended particles. EarthCARE will additionally “register the distribution of water droplets and ice crystals and how they are transported in clouds.”

“This essential data will improve the accuracy of both cloud development models and their behavior, composition and interaction with aerosols, as well as improve future climate models and support numerical weather prediction,” ESA officials added.

The satellite carries four scientific instruments: atmospheric lidar (a pulsed laser) to scrutinize the cloud tops and cloud and aerosol profiles; a cloud-profiling radar to learn about cloud motion, dynamics and structure; a broadband radiometer to examine solar radiation and infrared radiation; and a multispectral imager.

EarthCARE is expected to undergo a six-month commissioning period after launch, and its primary mission is scheduled to last at least three years. It was previously expected to launch on top of a Russian rocket, but mission officials switched to SpaceX after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which severed most space partnerships with that nation.