On Thursday, December 16, NASA will launch the first of 10 satellites it hopes to send into Earth orbit over the next decade to daily monitor the interplay between the planet's oceans, land, atmosphere and ice caps.
Terra, the largest and most expensive of the 10, will be launched aboard an Atlas-Centaur 2-AS rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California during a 25-minute window opening at 1:33 p.m. EST.
The bus-sized satellite will separate from the launch vehicle 14 minutes later. It will eventually enter polar orbit at an altitude of approximately 438 miles (705 kilometers), crossing the equator each day at 10:30 a.m. local time.
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The satellite, a holdout from NASAs pre-faster, better, cheaper era, has been 15 years and $1.3 billion in the making.
NASA intends Terra to be the flagship of its Earth Observing System of satellites that will look both at the Earth as a system and the effects of natural- and human-induced activity on that system. The program aims to collect a 15-year set of global data.
Terra carries a suite of five instruments that will study simultaneously and consistently water vapor, aerosols, particles, trace gases, terrestrial and oceanic properties, as well as how they interact and affect atmospheric radiation and climate, said Yoram Kaufman, project scientist for Terra.
Only one of the group of instruments has ever been flown before on a satellite.
Among Terras instruments are contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
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