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A new Earth science mission, led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), will help communities plan for a better future by surveying the planet’s salt and freshwater bodies. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will measure the height of water in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the oceans. As climate change accelerates the water cycle, more communities around the world will be inundated with water while others won’t have enough. SWOT data will be used to improve flood forecasts and monitor drought conditions, providing essential information to water management agencies, civil engineers, universities, the U.S. Department of Defense, disaster preparedness agencies, and others who need to track water in their local areas. In this video, examples of how SWOT data will be used in these communities are shared by a National Weather Service representative in Oregon, an Alaska Department of Transportation engineer, researchers from the University of Oregon and University of North Carolina, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist working with the Department of Defense, and a JPL scientist working with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency. :30 - Flood Watches & Warnings - Portland, Oregon 1:08 - Water Management - Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon 2:05 - Protecting Infrastructure - Alaska 2:54 - National Security - Department of Defense 3:24 - Coastal Protection - Mississippi River Delta SWOT is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in December 2022. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. To learn more about the mission, visit: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Thales Alenia Space

An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars located about 5,300 light-years from Earth. Each ring was created when the stars came close together and their colliding stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) caused some of the gas to compress into dust. Collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140, the stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years, so just like the growth rings of a tree trunk, these dusty loops mark the passage of time: The 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions. And while other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, no other pair is known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140. Because the stars’ orbits are elliptical rather than circular, the distance between the stars changes constantly, and dust forms only when they are close. The amount of dust produced by this interaction varies, so the system doesn’t form a perfect bullseye. One of the densest regions of dust production creates the bright feature repeating at 2 o’clock. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech For more information about the Webb telescope’s mission