Farmers irrigating their crops may soon be getting some help from space.
Farmers irrigating their crops may soon be getting some help from space. In 2018, scientists launched ECOSTRESS, a new instrument now attached to the International Space Station. Its mission: to gather data on how plants use water across the world.
The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) helps scientists answer three broad questions:
- How do plants respond to drought?
- What’s happening with plants’ water use over the course of a day?
- Can vulnerability to drought be reduced through more monitoring?
“Technically, the instruments are measuring surface temperature, which reflects the heat stress of plants,” explains Joshua Fisher of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Fisher is the science lead on the ECOSTRESS mission. “By measuring the temperature, we are able to tell how much water plants are using. For example, if you have two plants and water one, the one that has more water will be cooler.”
Read more at American Society of Agronomy
Image: This is a time lapse image of the ECOSTRESS launch to the International Space Station, June 29, 2018, NASA Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL. (Credit: Tom Cross for Teslarati)
