MADRID, 30 Dec. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Two cameras aboard the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured over four days the deployment of the antenna panels of the ship’s main scientific instrument.
the masts, deploying from opposite sides of the spacecraftcan be seen extending out of the spacecraft and locking into place, but the cameras stopped short of capturing the antennae at the ends of the fully extended masts (a milestone the team confirmed with telemetry data). in this video the two cameras are seen side by side.
The two antennas, located at a distance of 10 meters, belong to the innovative Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, which will measure the height of water over more than 90% of the Earth’s surface and will provide for the first time a high definition map of the water of our planet.
Launched from Vandenberg Space Base in central California on December 16, 2022, SWOT is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Center National d’Etudes Spatiales, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Canadian Space Agency.
The mission used two custom commercial cameras aboard the satellite (the same type used to capture NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on Mars) to capture the antenna deployment process.
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