Hey, everyone.
I'm Marina Jurica with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.,
and we're live here on lab in Southern California
to tell you a little bit more about the SWOT mission.
Now, the SWOT satellite will be observing
almost 90% of the water on the earth's surface for the first time.
And the SWOT mission is led by NASA and the French space agency CNES.
And here to tell me a little bit more about what SWOT will do
and how it will benefit each and every one of us is JPL hydrologist
Cedric David, and I'm going to be calling him into this Instagram live right now.
So just bear with me as I invite him In.
All right, I just sent him the invitation
and there he is.
Hello? Cedric, can you hear me? Yes. Hi.
Are we live?
This is it? We are live - this is it!
Well, Cedric, thank you so much for joining us today.
Well, thanks for having me.
And hello, everyone out there on the Internet.
Thank you for joining us for the SWOT revolution.
All right.
So tell me a little bit about where you’re joining us from today?
I'm currently standing in the von Karman Auditorium
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
And I'm standing right in front of a miniaturized model right here
of the SWOT spacecraft that is three times smaller than the real deal.
And that has none of the bells
and whistles of what we'll be launching into space next week.
And I wanted to thank so many people who are joining us.
I can see a lot of people are starting to sign in.
And I'm very happy to see everybody getting excited about this
very unique mission.
So tell us, Cedric, what SWOT stands out for?
And also what it's going to do to benefit the work that you do as a hydrologist?
So SWOT is S-W-O-T,
it stands for surface water and ocean topography.
So the new space mission will be launching next week
and it will be observing all of the waters on Earth -
90% of the waters on Earth - on two sides: in the ocean and on the land.
And what we'll do is we'll be seeing where water is and how high it is.
And from that, we can know where it's going.
It’s really incredible.
And the ocean will be continuing 30 years of observations
of sea levels, but doing that in such a much finer way
that we'll be able to better understand ocean currents.
That's really important for things like navigation, for example.
Now on land, on the continents, and that's really what I do on
an everyday basis that I'm really excited about, we’ll be looking at rivers,
lakes, reservoirs - so we'll know where they are,
how high they are and how much water is flowing,
which means that we will know the changes in the volume of water,
the storage, how much water we have on on continents in those water bodies.
But we also know how much water is flowing through them.
And that's kind of like taking the pulse
on Earth's arteries because Earth is a living planet.
And it's the same thing that when we go to the doctor to take our pulse -
we'll be doing that from space for the earth’s rivers with satellites.
And for the first time, Cedric which is great.
And we really need to know about that pulse
because we need to know about fresh water to be able to survive.
So I'm very excited about this as well, too.
Now, what made you want to become a hydrologist?
And for folks out there
who might be interested in this field, what advice do you have for them?
Well, I have a thing for water, Marina,
but I've always been curious about the environment, just understanding
what's happening around us, and what's so great with NASA is that,
of course we go into space, we look in the solar system and beyond,
and all of that is incredibly exciting and important.
But as long as we've been looking, we haven't really found
another planet for us to live on, right?
So planet Earth remains planet A and there is no planet B.
What this means
is that it’s very important for us to understand how our planet works.
And the way we do that is we ship satellites up in space.
They rotate around the earth and they take earth selfies to help us
observe many of the many characteristics
of the natural environment that allow us to plan for future generations.
It’s really, really important.
And also on that same vein,
it is an international truly an international collaboration.
So tell us a little bit about everyone who was involved with this SWOT mission
and why it placed that little special place in your heart as well?
Yeah. So you're right.
This is an international collaboration with hundreds, if not thousands of people,
and it's just two of us talking about it.
But so many people have been involved in the mission for many years.
And so it's currently an international collaboration
between NASA, the French space agency CNES,
but also the UK space agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
So in an international collaboration, in national effort,
kind of like the World Cup, except that at the end everybody wins
because we all understand better about the Earth's water cycle.
Now, just so happens that I was born in France and I've lived in the U.S.
for nearly 20 years and I study the world's rivers.
So there are three things about this that that connect me to the SWOT mission
that makes it
kind of a little bit of a match made in heaven for me to play a very
small part in a huge mission.
And that international collaboration
truly shows that water unites us all, which is really, really amazing.
So we talked a little bit about how what is going to track
almost 90% of the water on the Earth's surface.
Why is that so critical not only to us understanding
the water on Earth, but for your work as well?
Yeah. So water is very important for me.
I have a special connection with water.
It's my lifelong friend and my happy place and I encourage our audience
to go look at the video that we recently released on my adventure with water.
But now for us all, and I'll focus on the continents because that's my thing.
The United Nations tells us that safe access
to fresh water for drinking and for sanitation is a human right.
Now, if you think about it on Earth,
200 years ago was 1 billion people with a beat, right?
And now it's more than 8 billion people.
The amount of water that we've had on Earth has been the same
since the beginning of times.
But with more and more people, it's very important to make sure we
we understand how the water is moving around the earth as best as possible
so that we can ensure safe access to fresh water for everyone on this planet.
That's so important.
And earlier you were talking about how there is the spacecraft model
right behind you.
So tell us a little bit about what you think is the coolest part of the
satellite.
Yeah. Marina, do you like fireworks?
I do.
I love fireworks. Right.
It's so exciting.
So this spacecraft, in real life, it's 30 feet in width.
That's about 10 meters, right?
It's so big that it doesn't fit in the spacecraft - it doesn't
fit in the rocket, in the rocket that will be shipping next week.
So that means we have to fold it.
We have incredible engineers that figured out a way to fold the arms
and then attach them with little pyrotechnic devices
that are attached to strings.
And what we'll do is once we've packed it, put in the rocket, launched
it up in space, (it) will
be doing the unfolding.
And that involves little explosions to release the springs
so that the arms can open up and be as big as they need to be.
So space pyrotechnics, space fireworks, I think it’s just so cool.
It is.
And before we get to do all of that on unfolding,
we've actually got to launch the spacecraft next week, actually
really close to where we are right now, Cedric.
So where are you going to be for that big launch day next week?
Well, if all goes well, I will be at the base in Vandenberg
next week to be able to say bon voyage to the spacecraft,
the spacecraft, and wish it a safe journey up, up and away into space.
So it goes well.
And so I know that a
lot of your science will be, of course, after it launches.
But is there anything, you know, butterflies in your stomach?
Is there anything
that you are thinking of now as we're just one week away from launch?
I think it's butterflies in everybody's stomachs, Marina.
You know,
as I was as I mentioned earlier it’s, hundreds, if not thousands of people
who have been working on this mission, for many of them, much longer than I have.
It's been 20 years in the making.
And so, you know, every one of us
has been working very hard to make sure that everything goes as planned.
And when finally we'll get the observations,
the data that we've been looking for, that'll be something special.
But first things first.
Let's make sure that it goes there, that everything goes well next week.
Yes, we have definitely all got our fingers crossed
to make sure that it goes off without a hitch next week.
Thank you so much, Cedric, for joining us today.
We appreciate it so much and good luck with the launch next week at Vandenberg.
And thank you so much for everything that you do for SWOT.
Appreciate it.
All right. Thanks so much, Cedric. That was so great.
I know that you have a lot of questions about SWOT.
So if you want to learn more about this mission, then make sure to follow @NASAJPL
as well as @NASAClimateChange to learn more about the mission.
And, NASA, on its YouTube channel, will be broadcasting
the launch live from Vandenberg
Space Force
Base next week on December the 15th.
And that launch broadcast
is going to start at 3:00 in the morning, Pacific Standard Time.
So make sure to get the coffee ready.
And we want to hear from you.
If you want to ask questions, we might be able to answer it
live on that broadcast.
So make sure that you tune in and use the #TrackingWorldWater
so that we're able to answer those questions live.
And we're going to be talking to a few more SWOT mission members.
So make sure to tune in next month, January, in 2023
for more on this incredible mission.
And remember at NASA Earth Science, your home is our mission.
Thanks so much for watching.
And go SWOT