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WHEN we think about space launches, we tend to picture telescopes and astronauts. We don鈥檛 tend to think about farming. Yet on 1 March, a satellite is due to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and one of its main contributions will be to help farmers work their land more efficiently.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-T (GOES-T, aka 鈥済host鈥�), operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is the latest in a long line of probes designed not to look out to deep space, but back at Earth. In this case, it is designed to better understand how our atmosphere works and how its activity is shifting due to climate change.

Farmers will use the data returned, for example, to figure out precisely how much water their crops need. The new satellite will offer detailed information about a phenomenon called evapotranspiration, the process through which water evaporates from soil and plants and enters the atmosphere. Seeing how much evapotranspiration is occurring on their land and comparing this with the amount of water they gave their crops, farmers can calculate how much water those plants used. The result is that farmers can reduce water waste.

Of course, farmers aren鈥檛 the only ones interested in the weather. These days, we are all getting used to increasingly extreme weather events. Here in New Hampshire, we don鈥檛 get snow when we used to, and when we do get it, it isn鈥檛 nearly as much as in decades past. Oddly, the folks south of us, where it is typically warmer, are getting our snow. Climate change is so dramatic that we are all witnessing it in real time, and I find what I鈥檓 seeing stressful. Of course, our own individual observations are largely anecdotal. Our systematic understanding of climate change is coming from Indigenous people, who know their local ecosystems best, and from scientific researchers who study our global ecosystems.

Necessarily, this kind of research not only uses ground-based observations, but also snapshots of the big picture from space. GOES-T is ultimately a next-generation weather satellite that will orbit Earth at the same speed that our planet rotates on its axis, allowing it to remain stationary relative to the surface and continuously observe the Western hemisphere. It is the latest in the GOES-R series of satellites, which creatively is comprised of GOES-R, GOES-S, GOES-T, GOES-U. When it comes to monitoring conditions on Earth, all four satellites are specifically equipped with the capacity to take images in the visible and infrared. This allows NOAA, with the support of NASA, to track major events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires and volcanic eruptions like the one that recently caused a disastrous tsunami in Tonga.

鈥淲e can track major events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires and volcanic eruptions鈥�

But Earth鈥檚 weather isn鈥檛 the only weather GOES-T will be tracking. All satellites in the GOES-R series are also able to take images of the sun and monitor space weather, which is what we call the collection of phenomena that impact conditions in our solar system.

For example, the sun has powerful magnetic fields that can, ultimately, affect technology here on Earth. Solar flares associated with these fields, and mass ejections that are often associated with them, can be seriously disruptive, damaging power supplies, GPS and radio communications. They are also a risk to space facilities such as the International Space Station.

Earlier this month, the orbits of around 40 Starlink satellites, which provide internet access, failed because of the impact of space weather on the atmosphere. The sun also spits out high-energy particles known as the solar wind, which, when they interact with Earth鈥檚 magnetic field, produce beautiful night sky colours. These dancing glows are the auroras that can be seen near the poles.

GOES-T鈥檚 specialised instruments help us track all these phenomena. Here at the University of New Hampshire, my colleague James Connell, a professor in the department of physics and in our world-class Space Science Center, is heavily involved in the development of the GOES-T Energetic Heavy Ion Sensor. This will measure heavy ions flung out by the sun that fly through Earth鈥檚 magnetic field and will contribute to getting a global picture of the energetic particle climate that envelops our world and affects both our spacecraft and life on the ground.

This sort of work doesn鈥檛 tend to get much attention, and yet it is important because it is only by developing these instruments that we can gather the information we need. The painstaking work behind these kinds of craft, as much as the headline-grabbing launches of the rockets that carry the satellites, is critical to living well here on Earth.