Water is one of the most precious resources for life on Earth.

World Water Day, a UN initiative celebrated every year on March 22nd since 1993, addresses the importance of freshwater. It is also about tackling the global water crisis, in respect of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

This year, World Water Day coincides with the start of the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York (March 22nd-24th), the first of its kind in almost 50 years, aiming to mobilise global action for water resilience and security against the backdrop of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

On the occasion of this international observance day dedicated to water-related issues worldwide, we want to highlight two Earth observation missions focussing on hydrology and oceanography with significant SPACEBEL contribution related to simulation software.

• SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) – NASA & CNES             
  Launched on Dec. 16th 2022, it is the first satellite to monitor nearly all water on the Earth’s surface - oceans, rivers, lakes, reservoirs and wetlands - in terms of level and flow in general and dynamics of oceans and seas in particular.
             
  Our contribution: equipment & instrument simulation models; Training Operations and Maintenance Simulator (TOMS); Visualisation Tool for Space Data (VTS), a satellite simulation toolkit used to animate satellites in 2D or 3D environments. 
• SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) – ESA             
  Launched on November 22nd 2009, SMOS is observing soil moisture over land and sea-surface salinity over the oceans to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle. Data from SMOS are also used for weather and climate modelling, water resource management and agriculture. Moreover, they help to forecast extreme events (e.g. flood, drought …).    
  
  Our contribution: development of the operational simulator of the SMOS satellite