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Research Vessel (RV) Blissfully is a 30-foot sailboat that is the science lab and home for two sailing scientists, Captain Gordon Ackland and myself, Dr. Bridget Seegers. The RV Blissfully is a recent addition to the fleet of research vessels. Previously, Blissfully’s days were primarily spent peacefully floating snug in a San Diego boat slip with an occasional day sail. However, Blissfully was volunteered to support the PACE-PAX campaign and therefore transitioned a month ago into RV Blissfully.

Astrobiology - Algal blooms have become a common occurrence on Lake Erie, as much a part of summer at the lake as island-hopping, scenic cruises, and roller coasters. In 2024, a bloom of blue-green algae began forming in the lake’s western basin on June 24—the earliest that a bloom has been identified by NOAA since the agency began tracking them in 2002. It was still present in early September. Bloom season can last into October, with its duration depending on the frequency of wind events that mix lake waters in the fall.

06:00 Local Time: Go/No-Go Meeting We are in the field supporting PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment), a multi-disciplinary mission that involves two aircraft—the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter—and several mobile ocean assets, all helping to validate observations and data products from NASA’s new satellite observation platform, PACE. Our days typically start with an initial look at the weather in the area of operations and airport conditions during takeoff and landing. Both the ER-2 and Twin Otter will fly today since the weather is acceptable for launch, science, and landing.

Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the ship operations for the PACE-PAX campaign are underway!

The PACE satellite went into orbit in February 2024. Its mission is to help us better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide, as well as how aerosols can fuel phytoplankton blooms and help us track harmful algal blooms around the planet.

PACE-PAX stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem – Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (see why we made it shorter?) We are using two airplanes and three ships, among other free-sailing instruments, to gather data that will tell us how well our shiny new satellite, PACE, is doing. We compare our planet-side data with the space-side data so we can make sure we are providing the very best information about the health of the world’s oceans.

NASA - More than 100 scientists will participate in a field campaign involving a research vessel and two aircraft this month to verify the accuracy of data collected by NASA’s new PACE satellite: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission.

NASA Blogs - Stephen Broccardo, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is the principal investigator for the Sea-going Sky-Scanning Sun-tracking Atmospheric Research Radiometer (SeaSTAR). The ship-based instrument is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to check the information that NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite is collecting in orbit. Broccardo will use SeaSTAR for the first time in an upcoming PACE validation campaign.

GEOGRAPHY REALM - The Northwest Passage connects ship traffic through the Arctic Ocean to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The passage winds through a cluster of islands north of mainland Canada, offering a potentially shorter route between oceans but posing significant challenges due to the unpredictable Arctic waters and shifting ice.

SciTechDaily - On July 13, 2024, the OCI (Ocean Color Instrument) aboard NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite captured a rare, mostly cloud-free image of the islands and waterways that form the crux of the Northwest Passage.

Remote sensing is the science of looking at objects from a distance. Applying the concept to satellites, we can look at any number of objects from space. NASA’s PACE mission takes advantage of this – it is a satellite whose goal is to look at the Earth from space and help scientists answer a broad range of scientific questions. Join Skye Caplan, a remote sensing scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, to learn about the PACE mission as well as the long history NASA has of Earth observations. This was recorded on July 18, 2024.

Living on Earth - A powerful new NASA satellite called PACE can look at the ocean and clouds to distinguish between different kinds of microscopic phytoplankton and aerosols from an orbit 400 miles up. PACE Project Scientist Dr. Jeremy Werdell joins Host Jenni Doering to describe how the technology works, its value to scientific research on climate change, and the real-time data it provides about water and air quality worldwide.

NASA Goddard - Did you know that we can detect tiny organisms called phytoplankton from space?  These creatures affect the colors of the ocean, and NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud Ocean Ecosystem) satellite can see those colors in fine detail. Join NASA’s chief scientist Kate Calvin as she explores the PACE mission in depth with oceanographers Ivona Cetinić and Bridget Seegers.

Via Satellite - NASA wants to play a key role alongside the commercial satellite industry to use satellite technology to help avert the climate crisis. In a recent keynote at the Earth Observation Summit in London, Dalia Kirschbaum, director of the Earth Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said that NASA wants to help create an integrated system of data and make that available to others to address the climate crisis.

NASA Goddard - PACE, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecosystem mission, views our entire planet every day, returning data at a cadence that allows scientists to track and monitor the rapidly changing atmosphere and ocean, including cloud formatiPACE, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecosystem mission, views our entire planet every day, returning data at a cadence that allows scientists to track and monitor the rapidly changing atmosphere and ocean, including cloud formation, aerosol movement, and differences in microscopic ocean life over time.

NASA - What do you give to an ocean that has everything? This year, for National Ocean Month, NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite— is gifting us a unique look at our home planet. The visualizations created with data from the satellite, which launched on Feb. 8, are already enhancing the ways that we view our seas and skies.

NOAA - NOAA offers a comprehensive set of ocean color products that integrate information from NOAA, NASA, and international partner satellites. These products are used to assess water quality and monitor potentially harmful algal blooms in order to protect public health. On February 8, 2024, NASA launched the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, which is another new resource to help us better understand our oceans and climate.

EarthData - NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) spacecraft recently began providing scientists with their first look at the high-resolution, hyperspectral data that so many have been anxiously waiting to see. Now that the data are flowing, the PACE team is developing a series of Jupyter notebook tutorials to guide researchers using the Python coding language to access, visualize, and analyze PACE data. These data are available through NASA’s Ocean Biology Distributed Active Archive Center (OB.DAAC).

European Sting - When ERS-2 came spiralling down to Earth in March, it wasn’t just another satellite burning up in the atmosphere. ERS-2 was the last surviving of two satellites scientists reverently call “grandfathers of Earth observation in Europe”.
Launched in the early 1990s by the European Space Agency (ESA), the two ERS (Earth Remote Sensing) missions offered scientists new ways of studying our planet’s atmosphere, land and oceans. This included monitoring the sea ice, deforestation, ozone levels and many other aspects relating to our planet’s health.

MSN -The waters of the Earth can be blue, of course, but also beige. In fact there are so many hues of blue, shades of green and colors in between that one ends up being amazed by the palatte colors present. In February, NASA launched its PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite with which it has been capturing images of not just the aqueous surfaces of our planet, but also pictures that give you a whole new perspective of the Earth’s surface which can now be consulted on its website.

National Fisherman - For decades, NASA – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – has provided satellite images of the sea, revealing late winter and autumnal algal blooms in upwelling regions. The data was useful, to a degree, but limited. “We were getting a signal using six or seven colors from the rainbow,” says PACE project scientist Jeremy Werdell. “With the new technology, we are reading 200 different colors of the rainbow.”

news n'ne - A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the PACE mission in February this year.  After a brief commissioning period, the spacecraft has initiated operations.  The data has started flowing in, allowing scientists to examine how the oceans and atmosphere interact with each other.

True-color corrected reflectance image overlaid with a layer showing high chlorophyll a concentrations off the coast of California on May 8, 2024 (indicated in colors of red/dark red). This layer provides the near-surface concentration of chlorophyll a in milligrams of chlorophyll pigment per cubic meter (mg/m3). The image was acquired by the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) aboard the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite.

earth.com - NASA launched the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 8, 2024. The mission marks a significant advancement in our ability to study Earth’s oceanic and atmospheric systems. The PACE satellite is equipped with a state-of-the-art Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), designed to capture intricate details of ocean phenomena that are often invisible to the naked eye. This technology aims to provide new insights into the complex interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere.

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". Chemical reactions in the atmosphere turn DMS into sulphur-containing particles that offer a surface for water vapour to condense on. Do that enough times and the result is a cloud. Clouds, in turn, affect both the local weather and, by reflecting sunlight into space, the world’s climate.

Richomd Times - As the world’s oceans have moved into their 12th consecutive month as the warmest on record, a new National Aeronautics and Space Administration Earth-observing satellite mission has come online. It will monitor the ocean health and particulates in the atmosphere.

USF News -  From the air to sea, small things can have big impacts on our planet.
Aquatic microorganisms known as phytoplankton serve as photosynthesizing powerhouses, producing more than half of Earth’s oxygen. Aerosols — often-invisible particles suspended in the atmosphere — can have significant influence on Earth’s climate, weather, public health, and ecology.

The Baltimore Banner -  To better understand the ocean surface, NASA scientists went to the stars.
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite launched into orbit on Feb. 8 on a quest to better understand the microscopic content of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
“This mission is really the search for the invisible,” NASA Project Scientist Jeremy Werdell told Capital News Service.
Two Maryland teams — from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County — and a team from the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and Airbus Netherlands B.V., each worked on one of the three instruments on the satellite.

WSAZ - For more information about NASA’s Earth science missions and research, check out: nasa.gov/earth and @NASAEarth on social media.
For more about the PACE mission, click here: nasa.gov/pace

KHOU11 - Though every day is Earth Day at NASA, this year they are focusing on oceans and telling us about the newest Pace satellite.