Water Here, Water There, Water Everywhere

Now that we have discovered water ice on Mars, lets not forget our NASA missions that focus on water here on our planet Earth. Here are just a few of our orbiting and upcoming missions whose goals are to understand oceans and rainfall and how it affects our life on Earth.

AQUA: http://www.aqua.nasa.gov
Not only does Aqua mean water in Latin, it also stands for an Earth science satellite. AQUA collects information on the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere and clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea and land ice, and snow cover on land and ice. AQUA successfully launched on May 4, 2002.

GRACE: http://essp.gsfc.nasa.gov/grace/
A NASA Pathfinder mission, GRACE unravels global climatic issues by enabling a better understanding of ocean surface currents and heat transport, measuring changes in sea-floor pressure, watching the mass of the oceans change, and by monitoring changes in the storage of water and snow on the continents. GRACE successfully launched on March 17, 2002.

ICESAT: http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov
ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite) is the benchmark Earth Observing System (EOS) mission and will measure the ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, optical densities, vegetation and land topography. ICESAT is scheduled to launch in December, 2002.

TERRA: http://terra.nasa.gov
TERRA, the EOS flagship mission, provides global data on the state of the atmosphere, land, and oceans, as well as their interactions with solar radiation and with one another. Terra makes comprehensive measurements of phytoplankton biomass as well as dissolved organic matter in the upper ocean. These measurements of the "standing stock" of the base of the marine food web are critical to understanding the interactions between ocean circulation and productivity. TERRA successfully launched on December 18, 1999.

TRMM: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) allows meteorologists to make extremely precise measurements of rainfall over the ocean, where conventional ground-based instruments cannot see. Understanding rainfall and its variability is crucial to understanding and predicting global climate change. TRMM successfully launched November 17, 1997.

SEAWIFS: http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS.html
The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project provides quantitative data on global ocean bio-optical properties to the Earth science community. Subtle changes in ocean color signify various types and quantities of marine phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants), the knowledge of which has both scientific and practical applications. SEAWIFS successfully launched in August, 1997