From this Thursday, a new American spacecraft will be studying the role of plankton and aerosols in climate dynamics. Ednews reports citing Liberation.

Named Pace, this satellite is also a political survivor whose mission has, in the past, been systematically cut out of NASA's budget by Donald Trump.

Monitoring climate change is a highly complex task. It is obviously not enough to measure greenhouse gas emissions and then take the temperature in the four corners of the world, bemoaning the fact that heat records are being broken every month.

There are many other factors in the climate equation, and more and more satellites are orbiting the Earth to study these aspects in detail, each with its own speciality. Cloudsat, for example, studies clouds. Swot has been measuring the height of oceans, lakes and rivers for the past year. The French satellite Microcarb will soon be mapping the carbon sinks that absorb CO2.

And from this Thursday, a new American spacecraft will be looking at the role of plankton and aerosols in climate dynamics: the Pace satellite (for "Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem") is due to take off at 7.33 am from Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.