The Atlas V rocket’s West Coast work is done.
United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) workhorse rocket lifted off today (Nov. 10) from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 4:49 a.m. EST (0949 GMT; 1:49 a.m. local California time), carrying two payloads toward Earth orbit.Â
The rocket lifted off with a 24-minute delay due to issues with fuelling, which forced the ground control team to briefly halt the countdown. The post-launch sequence went without a hitch with the primary payload, the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2), separating flawlessly from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage about 28 minutes after lift-off.
JPSS-2, owned by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will gather a variety of weather and climate data once it’s up and running. The second spacecraft, an inflatable heat shield technology demonstrator called LOFTID, could help NASA land super-heavy payloads on Mars down the road.Â
Related: Powerful new Earth-monitoring satellite JPSS-2 to study weather’s ‘butterfly effect’
The Atlas V flew today in the rocket’s most stripped-down configuration, without any solid rocket boosters. JPSS-2 and LOFTID were also housed in a 13-foot-wide (4 meters) payload fairing, the smallest available for an Atlas V.
The rocket’s first-stage RD-180 engine burned for about 4 minutes before a nominal main engine cutoff and first-stage separation, followed by a series of burns from the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage to keep carrying the two payloads aloft. JPSS-2 was deployed about 28 minutes after liftoff into a polar orbit 440 miles (710 kilometers) above Earth. LOFTID is scheduled to deploy into a highly elliptical orbit at T+75 minutes, then head back down for a fiery reentry trial in Earth’s atmosphere.
That this was the last Atlas V launch from the West Coast symbolizes a shift ahead for ULA’s California launch facilities. Following today’s mission, Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 3-East will begin upgrades to facilitate launches of the company’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is expected to debut sometime in the first quarter of 2023.Â
Launching a weather powerhouse
Today’s mission also represents a shift forward for both payloads’ respective technologies. JPSS-2 — a joint effort of NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — is essentially a weather satellite, but the rather banal nomenclature doesn’t do justice to the spacecraft’s capabilities. JPSS-2 is joining two other weather satellites in polar orbit and will be an Earth-monitoring powerhouse.Â
The first satellite in the JPSS program, the Suomi-NPP spacecraft, launched in 2011. The second, NOAA-20, followed suit in 2017. (NOAA-20 was known as JPSS-1 until it reached its final orbit.) JPSS-2 is joining them to help scientists collect, and better understand, enormous amounts of meteorological data that will improve global weather models, among other uses.
“NOAA 20, Suomi-NPP, and soon JPSS-2 aid our meteorologists in meeting the National Weather Service mission for all Americans,” Jordan Gerth, a meteorologist and satellite scientist for NOAA’s National Weather Service, said during a prelaunch press briefing on Tuesday evening (Nov. 8). “First, JPSS data is a major input into U.S. and international global numerical weather prediction modeling systems.”
Gerth used a tropical storm as a hypothetical example to explain what kind of data JPSS-2’s scientific instruments will gather.Â
“The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS instrument, provides imagery at a spatial resolution of 375 meters, or approximately a quarter mile, and enables the detection of thunderstorm features such as overshooting tops,” Gerth said. Overshooting tops, he explained, can help determine the severity of a storm. VIIRS can also detect mesospheric gravity waves emanating from the center of tropical systems.Â
JPSS-2 is also carrying the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), which can see through cloud canopies to determine the interior structures of hurricane eye walls. The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) aboard the spacecraft will work in tandem with ATMS to convert temperature and moisture data at different elevations into 3D representations for atmospheric models.
In its polar orbit, JPSS-2 will circle the globe 14 times every 24 hours, providing complete coverage of the entire planet twice daily. In addition to its weather work, the satellite, which will be operated by NOAA, is designed to monitor sea ice, ocean color, temperature, and biodiversity shifts, as well as wildfires, floods and even economic recovery efforts in areas affected by natural disasters.
Related: Climate change: Causes and effects
Testing heavy-duty Mars landing tech
JPSS-2 is designed to gather data from orbit for at least seven years. The other payload that went up on the Atlas V today, LOFTID (short for “Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator”), won’t operate for nearly that long.
LOFTID is based on hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) technology. It will test the capabilities and performance of an expandable heat shield during reentry through a planetary atmosphere. Expandable heat shields have high potential benefits for the future of spaceflight, NASA officials say, potentially allowing much heavier payloads to be landed safely on the surface of Mars than is currently possible. The agency will need such heavy-duty landing tech to build a research outpost on the Red Planet, which it hopes to start doing in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
LOFTID is packed with sensors, which will help mission team members characterize the vehicle’s fiery return to Earth. LOFTID is expected to reach a maximum speed of nearly 18,000 mph (30,000 kph) during that descent, which will end with a parachute-aided splashdown a few hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii about 110 minutes after liftoff, if all goes according to plan.
“During entry,” Joe Del Corso, LOFTID project manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, said during Tuesday’s briefing, “LOFTID will also be taking a number of measurements across a suite of instruments, including temperatures across the aeroshell, pressures and heat flux on the nose cap, as well as 360-degree video on six video cameras, and IR data from 12 infrared cameras. We’ll also be able to get an aerial mapping of temperature from the fiber optics strain sensor, or FOSS, which will be on the nose of the vehicle.”Â
LOFTID will also eject an additional data core during its fall to Earth, so team members will have access to this information even if the main vehicle is damaged or destroyed.
Though no more Atlas V vehicles will launch from Vandenberg, the rocket isn’t ready for retirement yet. There are still a lot of Atlas V missions left on ULA’s books, but all of them will fly from Florida’s Space Coast.
Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).
