UMaine News - On Feb. 8, Emmanuel Boss watched via livestream from Maine as 15 years of work culminated in a satellite launching into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Appearing as if enveloped in a ball of fire, the satellite jetted upward through the dark sky. It was 1:33 a.m. 

Forbes - As a former scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, I still get very excited with the successful launch of a mission focused on Planet Earth. Unfortunately, NASA’s robust Earth Sciences program and its missions often do not get the same attention as past shuttle launches, large telescopes or Mars rovers.

NASA GSFC - Kirk Knobelspiesse is an atmospheric scientist and the project science team polarimeter lead for PACE at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He is also the polarimeter instrument scientist for the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) constellation.

Spaceflight Now - From the oceans to the atmosphere, there’s still quite a bit we don’t understand about our planet. NASA’s latest Earth-observing spacecraft hopes to greatly expand our knowledge of the globe in just a few years.

NH Business Review - A satellite with New Hampshire-made optical components that help detect microscopic ocean plankton and aerosol particles that may inform climate change is in space as of earlier this month.
Engineers at the Corning Advanced Optics plant in Keene used their foundational expertise from earlier work with private space firms and NASA to help build crucial parts of the federal space agency’s PACE satellite, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Feb. 8 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket after a weather delay.

UMBC News -  The third time’s the charm. Against a calm and crisp dark night sky on Florida’s Cape Canaveral last Thursday, February 8, just after 1:30 a.m., the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) spacecraft rocketed to orbit carrying on board Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2)―UMBC’s wide-angle imaging polarimeter.  The launch marked the first time NASA deployed a university payload on a large operational Earth science space mission.

NASA GSFC - Amir Ibrahim is the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) project science lead for atmospheric correction at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Official NASA Broadcast - Our Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will study what makes Earth so different from every other planet we study: life itself. Three-quarters of our home planet is covered by water, and PACE’s advanced instruments will provide new ways to measure the distributions of microscopic algae known as phytoplankton near the ocean’s surface. Those observations will enhance our understanding of the crucial exchange of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere.

WIRED - Way up in the sky and sprinkled across the seas, two of the littlest yet most influential things in the world have stubbornly guarded their secrets: aerosols and phytoplankton.

The Economist - Small things can have big effects. Take the plant plankton that populate the Earth’s oceans. When zooplankton eat them, the phytoplankton release a chemical called dimethyl sulphide (dms) and it is this that people are referring to when they speak of the “smell of the sea”.