The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on 4 April that it would launch a satellite to improve weather forecasting in the Arctic, a region heavily impacted by global warming, in June, according to Euractiv.
The Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS) has been under development by European aerospace company OHB for three years. It will be launched from California via a SpaceX rocket.
Swedish Education Minister Mats Persson stated that the mission was particularly important for global warming research as the Arctic was warming up faster than the rest of the planet.
Mitigating climate change is a priority and space data is essential for analysing the changes and identifying the effective solutions.
The satellite is expected to operate for about five years, supporting other satellites already in orbit. It will “provide accurate short-term weather forecasts for the Arctic region,” according to the ESA.
Persson remarked that the launch of the AWS proved the European co-operation.
“This is a region that is becoming more difficult geopolitically, mainly because of the war in Ukraine. This is why Europe’s independence in terms of space infrastructure must be guaranteed [via collaborations of this kind].”
With the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022, the lack of co-operation between Russia and Western countries led to the loss of a significant amount of data for researchers, the ESA claimed in January.
