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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — After a two-day delay due to weather, a NASA satellite that observes the tiniest parts of the atmosphere and ocean is scheduled to launch from the Space Coast early Thursday, when the rocket’s booster sends out shockwaves that pierce households in central Florida. may be shocking. Sonic boom during recovery landing.
The Plankton Aerosol Cloud and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite has been years in the making, with the Trump administration seeking to shift funding away from some missions focused on climate change and toward deep space. has been on the chopping block for NASA’s annual budget proposal many times. – Space initiatives.
The nearly $1 billion PACE satellite now sits atop a Falcon 9 rocket, ready for launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, but due to strong winds Tuesday and early Wednesday The launch is now scheduled for 1:33 a.m. Thursday, a delay from the original plan. .
The early morning launch could also cause a big sonic boom surprise for the Space Coast and surrounding counties as the flight’s boosters return to Landing Zone 1 at Canaveral instead of descending into the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX is warning residents of Brevard, Orange, Osceola, Indian River, Seminole, Volusia, Polk, St. Lucie, and Okeechobee counties that they may receive one or more sonic booms, depending on weather and other conditions. It warns you that you may be overheard.
Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron expects a 95 percent chance of favorable conditions for Thursday’s attempt.
If launched, it would be the eighth launch from the Space Coast in 2024, potentially bringing the total to 111 launches per year.
The mission, conducted at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was originally conceived more than 20 years ago but has been in the works for nine years, said Jeremy Wardell, NASA’s PACE project scientist.
“What we’re doing here at PACE is actually exploring the microscopic, almost invisible universe that’s in the ocean and the sky, on some landmass,” he says. I did.
The three instruments onboard will examine the interaction of sunlight with clouds, aerosol particles in the air, and the entire catalog of phytoplankton that form the basis of the ocean’s food chain.
“It’s that simple. We collect photons from the sun, just collect, collect, collect,” he said.
Wardell, whose primary focus is on the ocean, and PACE atmospheric scientist Andy Thayer outlined why it’s useful to look at this information on a space-based basis.
Werdel said there are both beneficial types of phytoplankton, such as those that aid fishing and help absorb carbon dioxide, and harmful types, such as those associated with red tide and blue-green algae, which can cause fish kills and pollution. points out that it exists. air.
“For the first time on a global scale…as the oceans begin to change, we will know where the harmful things are, where the beneficial things are, and where the beneficial things are moving.”
Thayer’s focus on clouds and aerosols will have wide-ranging applications, he says.
“We have a pretty good idea from satellites of the total amount of aerosols, but we don’t know very precisely how the aerosols break down into all these species,” he said.
These range from industrial carbon emissions to sulfates and sea spray. Thayer said knowing where different species exist can inform public policy regarding air quality and human health, for example. He could also provide information on where beneficial particulate matter could encourage improvements in agriculture and fisheries.
Some of that data could help inform the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when it comes to its role in how aerosols influence cloud formation. This includes tracking dust in the Sahara Desert.
“Interactions between the types of dust that heat up in the atmosphere are thought to help control cloud formation and how these storms move and grow. ” he said. “So the better we can figure that out, the better we can probably predict and get a better prediction of what more severe consequences of this type are going to be in the future.”
Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, said NOAA is a key partner in the mission and the data is expected to help predict hurricane intensification and tracking.
“They were early adopters for a variety of reasons, from weather forecasting to long-term climate to harmful algae blooms to fisheries impacts,” she said.
The PACE satellite builds on some existing observations, most of which are hyperlocal, ground-based sensing, which allows us to see these microscopic phenomena on a macroscopic level in space, Welder said. he said.
“We’re studying the coupled Earth system,” Wardell said. “This is not an ocean mission. It’s not an atmospheric mission. It’s not a land mission. It’s a mission that involves everything. And that’s very important, because you can’t understand one without understanding the other. It’s from.”
He said the science determined from the mission is partially unknown, but that’s a good thing.
“There’s something in the scientific community with PACE that can grow, and that hasn’t happened for a really long time,” he said. “This is a mission where we don’t know what we’ll learn. And that’s very exciting.”
The PACE mission has a planned 10-year life in orbit and was one of President Trump’s first targets for the fiscal year 2018 budget, but Congress removed funding for the mission in the final appropriation. I have recovered. It will join more than 20 Earth science satellites currently orbiting Earth.
“It’s been a long and strange journey, as they say,” an emotional Werdel said Sunday at a pre-flight press conference after his mission was nearly canceled several times. That’s what he said.
“We had the utmost confidence that we would find a way to endure. The community wanted all of this,” he said. “I’m not going to dive into policy or politics, but this has been a really amazing journey, and with support from the community, support from government agencies, and support from people like you who are participating and asking questions, we’ve been able to… We were able to keep morale high.”
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