CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An ancient missile launches a cutting-edge weather satellite.
That's how the TV listing would describe what's scheduled to happen early Wednesday morning in California, where a converted Air Force Titan 2 rocket is to loft a new $267 million polar-orbiting satellite into space for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
An artist's concept shows the NOAA weather satellite as it might appear circling the planet once every 100 minutes. Lockheed Martin image.
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Liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base is planned during a 10-minute window that opens at 6:22 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (10:22 GMT), and weather forecasts say conditions are expected to be perfect.
A brush fire on and near the base last week is contained and won't be an issue for the launch.
"All facilites we require to support this launch are up operating, in place and ready to go for this evening," said Major Dave Saim, the Air Force Titan 2 launch director.If all goes well during the launch, the 10-story-tall, two-stage missile will deliver the NOAA L weather satellite into an orbit some 520 miles (837 kilometers) above the planet less than seven minutes after liftoff.
Following a routine period of checks and tests, the satellite will be declared operational and re-named NOAA 16. It will circle Earth every 100 minutes, flying over both poles on each orbit and crossing the equator at 2 p.m. local time.
Working with another NOAA satellite already in space and in a slightly different orbit, meterologists on the ground will be able to see any spot on the planet in a picture that is never more than six hours old, said John Jones, deputy director of the National Weather Service.
NOAA 16 will replace NOAA 14, which was launched five years ago and has since drifted far enough out of its proper orbit that the information it still provides is no longer useful, said Mike Mignogno, NOAA's program manager for this spacecraft.
"It's critical for us to get this satellite up," Mignogno said Tuesday.
With this more complete weather picture of the planet, along with the help of newer instruments installed on this particular satellite, forecasters will be better equipped to predict what might happen and help all of us plan for the worst that Mother Nature has in store.
Meanwhile, the fact that data from the NOAA L satellite will positively affect the lives of millions of people offers an historic irony: the Titan 2 booster NOAA L will ride into orbit was originally built to harm, not help, millions of people.
| Watch NASA TV |
| The Titan 2 launch at 6:22 a.m. EDT (10:22 GMT) Wednesday will be broadcast on NASA TV and carried live right here on SPACE.com. |
The Titan 2 missile was developed during the 1950s to carry nuclear bombs from the United States to any point on Earth, especially the Soviet Union. More than 140 of the missiles eventually were placed in buried silos all over the nation to sit and wait for the order to fly.
Eventually replaced by the Minuteman and submarine-launched Trident missile programs, most of the Titan 2 missiles were removed from their launch bunkers and dismantled or destroyed. But in January 1986 the Air Force awarded a $659 million contract to Lockheed Martin to take 14 of the interncontinental ballistic missiles, also known as ICBMs, and turn them into space launch vehicles.
So far nine of the 14 have been launched from Vandenberg, all successfully. The booster that NOAA L is to ride on will be the tenth in the series, Saim said. The Titan 2's two stages spent more than 20 years in two separate silos.
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