The powerful GOES-U weather satellite was cleared for launch today aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – The green lights keep shining for the launch of a powerful US weather satellite.
GOthe fourth and final member of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation GOES-R series of weather the satelliteshas been cleared for Tuesday’s (June 25) scheduled liftoff following an in-depth readiness review on Monday (June 24).
The two-hour launch window for GOES-U opens at 5:16 p.m. EDT (2116 GMT) on Tuesday. The spacecraft will take a trip on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here on the Space Coast, weather permitting. This will be Falcon Heavy’s 10th launch overall and the 65th orbital lift of 2024 for SpaceX.
You can watch the launch live in the window above and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of NASA. Coverage will begin no earlier than 3:00 PM EDT (1900 GMT).
Late Monday afternoon (June 24), mission members and launch operations teams briefed the media about the final checklist items for Tuesday’s launch.
“The GOES-U spacecraft is ready, the launch vehicle is ready, and we can’t wait to get the spacecraft into orbit,” Denton Gibson, senior mission manager in NASA’s Launch Services Program, said during a press conference Monday. .
It took a bit of work to prepare everything. For example, on Sunday evening (June 23), while preparing for Monday’s liftoff of GOES-U and Falcon Heavy to the pad, the launch team discovered a problem with the transport’s air conditioning (AC) system.
“The system has redundant parallel systems in it, and one of those legs was not working,” Julianna Schiman, NASA’s director of science missions at SpaceX, said at Monday’s briefing. “We decided to keep the vehicle safe and make sure the AC transport unit was fully operational. Now, that transport unit is fully operational and providing very cool air.”
But this is Florida. So even though it’s all systems go, one big question remains: Will Mother Nature cooperate?
“We’re going to go with a 70% probability of violation, or a 30% chance of ‘go’ for all the weather rules that we evaluate,” Brian Cizek, weather official with US Space Force45th Weather Squadron, said during Monday’s briefing.
there are a set of 10 weather rules, or criteria, that must be met for the launch to proceed. In typical Florida fashion, there are concerns that afternoon thunderstorms could materialize, or clouds could form that would lead to lightning forming on the Falcon Heavy during launch. This would be a dangerous situation.
“What is interesting is that a rocket it can actually cause a lightning strike that wouldn’t have [otherwise] happened,” Cizek told Space.com. “Certain types of clouds at certain levels of the atmosphere can actually carry a charge that’s not strong enough for a natural strike, but can cause a lightning strike. So these rules are designed to protect.”
However, the two-hour kick-off window will give the team a real chance to get off the ground.
“Even if you step on part of the window, we can move things around as the weather looks better,” Cizek said. “So if it looks worse at the beginning of the window, we may move towards the middle or the end of the window if we see the storms start to die down. I think there will be a possibility and we will work closely with our weather team. of departure.”
Like its satellite siblings, GOES-U will have plenty of scientific bells and whistles. The new spacecraft’s instruments will provide state-of-the-art imaging. It will also study Earth’s weather, oceans and environment in detail, including performing real-time mapping of lightning activity. GOES-U’s science instrument features updates and improvements over its predecessor instruments, and carries a brand new compact coronagraph tool to help with space weather predictions.
You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Coverage will begin no earlier than 3:00 PM EDT (1900 GMT).
The successor to NOAA’s GOES-R series will be Geostationary Enhanced Observations (GeoXO) satellite system., scheduled to launch in the early 2030s.
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Image Source : www.space.com
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