Washington, May 19 (TIWN) After being delayed over a year due to the pandemic, NASA has launched a mission with scientific instruments aboard a self-propelled ocean glider and several airplanes to study the role of small-scale whirlpools and ocean currents in climate change.

"This campaign in May is largely to compare different ways of measuring ocean surface currents so that we can have confidence in those measurements when we get to the pilot in October," said Tom Farrar, Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and principal investigator for S-MODE.  The full-fledged field campaign will begin in October 2021.