The US space agency NASA made the first of three flights this Sunday from Florida to put CubeSat observation satellites into orbit for its TROPICS program to monitor tropical storms.
After some delays, which paralyzed a first count, an Astra rocket successfully took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in central Florida, at around 1:43 pm EST (17:43 GMT).
The satellite measures microwave frequencies ranging from about 90 to 205 gigahertz, which can monitor atmospheric emissions produced by water vapor, oxygen and clouds in the atmosphere, NASA said in a statement.
TROPICS
Each TROPICS satellite is identical: a CubeSat the size of a slice of bread and weighing approximately 12 pounds.
TROPICS’ target altitude is 550 kilometers, and the pairs of CubeSats will have three slightly different low-Earth orbits, all at an angle of about 30 degrees above the equator.
TROPICS is an acronym for temporally resolved observations of precipitation structure and storm intensity with a constellation of small satellites.
PROGRAM
The program consists of six satellites in total launched through three Astra flights. A seventh satellite, serving as a rover, was launched in 2021.
This satellite, Pathfinder, was a test CubeSat that has captured images of several tropical cyclones, including Hurricane Ida over the United States, Cyclone Batsirai over Madagascar, and Super Typhoon Mindulle over eastern Japan.
This first flight today is part of a contract for three in total for about 8 million dollars. EFE
