Despite a
rainy start and one countdown abort, six small satellites launched spaceward
Friday on a mission to study the Earth's atmosphere and track climate change.
An Orbital
Sciences-built Minotaur rocket shot the multi-satellite mission into orbit at 9:40
p.m. EDT (0140 April 15 GMT) from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, where
rain and clouds reigned for most of the day. It was the second attempt to loft
the spacecraft Friday after a last-minute glitch prevented a liftoff almost 90
minutes earlier.
A joint
effort between researchers in the U.S. and Taiwan, the $100 million COSMIC
mission - short for Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere
and Climate - will use a network of six satellites and a method called radio
occultation to measure the Earth's atmosphere along thousands of data points.
The
spacecraft use a set of four global positioning system (GPS) antennas and a suite
of other instruments to track how GPS satellite signals are distorted by
the Earth's atmosphere.
From that
distortion, researchers can track atmospheric conditions such as air density, temperature, moisture
or electron density. Mission scientists hope the system, which is expected to
take 2,500 occultation soundings all over the globe - included the Earth's
oceans - every 24 hours, will provide a data boon for weather forecasters and
atmospheric researchers.
"You guys
did a fantastic job," said William Kuo, director of the COSMIC office at the University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, to launch
controllers just after the sixth COSMIC satellite was deployed in orbit.
UCAR
designed the satellite system used for COSMIC's planned two-year mission, but about
$80 million of the mission's cost was covered by Taiwan's National Science
Council and National Space Organization.
The U.S.
National Science Foundation and its partners - which included NASA, the U.S.
Air Force Space Test Program, the Office of Naval Research and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - covered the rest.
Each of the
six COSMIC satellites - known together as FORMOSAT 3 in Taiwan - is just a few inches wide and weighs about 137 pounds (62 kilograms). Originally
developed by Orbital Sciences for the ORBCOMM data communications network, the probes
were modified for the COSMIC mission and are expected to reach their final
circular orbits - between 435 and 500 miles (700 and 800 kilometers) above
Earth - in about 13 months.
The mission
relies on some radio occultation techniques and hardware developed by NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the space agency said.
"COSMIC
is a prime example of transitioning NASA remote sensing technology into
operational weather forecasting," explained Tony Mannucci, supervisor of
JPL's Ionospheric and Atmospheric Remote Sensing Group, in a statement.
"The expected improvements in forecasting skill and COSMIC's contribution
to long-term climate monitoring are a direct result of NASA's research
investments in radio occultation, a technology originally developed by JPL in
the 1960s for planetary atmospheric studies and later refined in the 1990s for
Earth orbit use."
While the
spacecrafts are expected to perform for two years, they carry enough fuel for a
five-year study, Orbital officials said.
Friday's
successful space shot marked the fifth launch of an Orbital-built Minotaur
rocket since its debut in 2000.
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