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Updated June 5th, 2022 at 17:20 IST

What is NASA's EMIT mission launching to the International Space Station on June 10?

NASA is launching the brand new EMIT mission to the International Space Station on June 10 from the Kennedy Space Center. Read to know more.

Reported by: Harsh Vardhan
NASA
Image: NASA/JPL | Image:self
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NASA is launching a brand new mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 10 at 7:52 pm (IST). Named the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation or EMIT, it will analyse dust carried through the atmosphere from dry regions and determine the effects it has on our planet. Around a billion metric tons of mineral dust from Earth’s deserts are carried into the Earth's atmosphere and are believed to have a significant effect on the climate. Scientists think that these dust particles heat and cool the Earth but they do not know for sure if they specifically heat the planet or cool it.

Facts about the EMIT mission and how it would help

Prepared by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the EMIT is an imaging spectrometer that will collect more than a billion dust-source-composition measurements around the globe over the course of a year. After its launch on a resupply mission to the ISS, EMIT will be attached to the exterior of the space station. Being a spectrometer, it has a telescope to collect light and would see light into hundreds of wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. According to NASA, the spectrometer will serve five basic purposes. 

The first purpose would be to identify the composition of mineral dust from Earth’s arid regions or deserts. Since deserts produce most of the mineral dust, EMIT will map each of such sources across the world. It will also provide information on the colour and composition of dust sources globally for the first time and help scientists understand which kinds of dust dominate each region. 

Moving on, the mission would also finally uncover if the dust actually heats or cools the planet. EMIT will do so by determining the colour of the dust. The colour matters because if the dust particles are dark coloured, say dark red, they would absorb the sunlight and warm the Earth and if the particles are white, they would reflect the sunlight and cool the planet. The mission's third purpose is to help scientists understand how dust affects different Earth processes such as ocean fertilisation, rainforest fertilisation, cloud formation, atmospheric chemistry, snow melt and even transportation hazards. 

Notably, this one-of-a-kind mission would also improve the accuracy of climate models and support the prediction of how future climate scenarios will affect the type and amount of dust in our atmosphere. As for the launch, it will be conducted from the Kennedy Space Center as part of SpaceX's 25th commercial resupply services mission to the ISS.

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Published June 5th, 2022 at 17:20 IST

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