Delta IV launch of a weather satellite as viewed from Melbourne Florida

Delta IV launch of a weather satellite from my backyard in Melbourne Florida on Thursday March 4th 2010.

GOES-P is an American weather satellite, which will form part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) system operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The spacecraft was constructed by Boeing, and is the last of three GOES satellites to be based on the BSS-601 bus. The other BSS-601 GOES satellites; GOES 13 and GOES 14 were launched in May 2006 and June 2009 respectively. It total it will be the sixteenth GOES satellite to be launched.

GOES-P will be launched atop a Delta IV-M+(4,2) rocket flying from Space Launch Complex 37B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch is currently scheduled to occur during a sixty minute launch window opening at 23:17 GMT on 4 March. Upon reaching geostationary orbit the satellite will be redesignated GOES 15. It will then undergo a series of post-launch tests before being placed into storage as a backup to await the failure of an operational GOES satellite.

At launch, the mass of the satellite will be 3,238 kilograms (7,140 lb). It has a design life of ten years. Power will be supplied by a single gallium arsenide solar panel, which is intended to provide upto 2.3 kilowatts of power. A 24 cell nickel hydrogen battery will be used to provide power when the satellite is not in sunlight. Instruments aboard GOES-P include a five channel multispectral imager to capture visible light and infrared images of the continental United States, a sounder to take readings of atmospheric temperature and moisture, a solar x-ray imager to detect solar flares, and instruments to monitor the magnetosphere, cosmic background radiation and charged particles.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Delta
• IV
• rocket
• launch
• weather
• satellite
• cape
• canaveral
• florida

[andreirocks1992]

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