Canberra scientists have developed laser technology that is playing a key role in a joint NASA and German space mission to measure the Earth's gravity and the impacts of climate change.
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Early on Wednesday morning in California, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off, sending the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on (GRACE-FO) mission spacecraft into orbit.
The spacecraft was closely followed by twin satellites, which feature an innovative laser system developed by an Australian National University research team.
Professor Daniel Shaddock, who led the team, said the satellites would fly about 200 kilometres apart, circling Earth every 90 minutes.
The satellites accelerate when they pass areas with a higher mass concentration, firing laser beams between each other to gather precise measurements of gravity that can be used to track shifts in oceans, ice shelves and other waterways.
"This mission measures the change in the Earth's gravity from one month to the next, and that tells you how mass moves around the Earth," Professor Shaddock said.
"The only thing that really moves around from one month to the next is water.
"This can tell us about changes in sea level and it can give us a complete map of the melting of ice in Greenland or Antarctica, but it can also tell us how the ground water changes in the Murray Darling Basin from one month to the next."
The technology, developed using a $4.7 million Australian Space Research Project grant, is the first of its kind, and will soon have even further-reaching implications.
The laser system is also being developed for a multi-billion dollar gravitational wave detector mission on track for launch in about 10 years.
"This will be the first mission that shoots laser beams between spacecraft and makes what’s called a coherent measurement," Professor Shaddock said.
"There are already plans to do missions not just around Earth, but also around Mars and other planets to map the mass and the water on those planets."
The university's scientists have developed software to analyse data from the GRACE-FO mission and estimate the melting of polar ice sheets, increases in ocean mass and hydrological changes across the world.
Dr Paul Tregoning said knowing how fast the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica were melting was critical in assessing the impacts of climate change.
"GRACE-FO measurements will quantify what is actually happening, providing clear evidence of the impacts of climate change," Dr Tregoning said.
The prototype of the laser triple mirror assembly used in the satellites is on display at the Australian National University.
