The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission’s journey to space was not merely a 13-minute ascent from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in February 2024; it was the zenith of over two decades of technological advancements led by a coalition of NASA and global scientists. These technical breakthroughs equipped PACE to analyze Earth’s ocean and atmosphere with groundbreaking precision.
At the dawn of the millennium, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center gave birth to the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment (ORCA), a revolutionary instrument that later evolved into PACE’s principal tool, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI). Fast forward to the 2010s, and another significant advancement took place as NASA collaborated with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to create the Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP), a compact device destined to perform innovative atmospheric aerosol measurements.
These pioneering instruments, OCI and HARP2—a near-replica of HARP—are products of NASA’s commitment to fostering new Earth-observing technologies through the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO)’s distributed competitive grants. ESTO has championed the development of over 1,100 such technologies within the last quarter-century.
Jeremy Werdell, a project scientist for PACE and oceanographer at NASA Goddard, attributes the ease of building the PACE observatory to proactive technological investments. “All of this investment in the tech development early on basically made it much, much easier for us to build the observatory into what it is today,” Werdell remarked.
Charles “Chuck” McClain, former leader of the ORCA team, reasserted the significance of ESTO, stating, “Without ESTO, it wouldn’t have happened. It was a long and winding road, getting to where we are today.”
Pivotal to OCI’s success was the technological triumph of syncing a rapidly rotating telescope with high-precision charge-coupled devices, enabling the capture of hyperspectral ocean color in ways previously unattainable from space. “One really important consideration was technology readiness,” stated Gerhard Meister, who followed in McClain’s footsteps. PACE picked ORCA for its proven performance and readiness.
The technology readiness was equally crucial for the selection of HARP as PACE’s polarimeter. The compact HARP2 is based on years of research and several incarnations, including AirHARP and HARP CubeSat, which validated its potential.
Vanderlei Martins, an atmospheric scientist at UMBC, leveraged ESTO support to refine HARP technology, and Jessie Turner, a PACE data adopter, anticipates that these advancements in polarimetry will enhance research into water particles.
Martins, Turner, and McClain showcase a collective testimonial to the importance of early technology development for PACE’s existence.
For more information or to engage with NASA’s technology endeavors, one can visit ESTO’s funding opportunities page here.
By Gage Taylor
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
FAQs about PACE and its Predecessor Projects
- What is the PACE mission?
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission is a NASA project designed to monitor the Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, collecting data to better understand global environmental changes. - How did the ORCA instrument contribute to PACE?
The Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment (ORCA) was a prototype instrument that led to the development of the PACE mission’s primary tool, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), which has advanced the study of hyperspectral ocean color from space. - What is the significance of the HARP and HARP2 instruments?
HARP, or Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter, and its successor HARP2 are instruments designed to measure atmospheric aerosols with high precision. Their compact size and lack of moving parts make them ideal for space-based environmental monitoring. - What role has ESTO played in the development of PACE?
NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) has funded and supported over 1,100 new technological advancements, including those instrumental in the development of the PACE mission’s OCI and HARP2.
Conclusion
The journey of NASA’s innovative observation technologies ORCA and HARP through to the PACE mission marks a milestone in Earth science. This groundbreaking approach to observing our planet’s ocean and atmosphere would not have been feasible without the commitment of NASA and its partners to technology readiness and advancement. The successful collaboration and decades of meticulous research and development have now culminated in the deployment of one of the most sophisticated environmental monitoring tools in space.