Scott Nicholas
Ball Aerospace has helped encapsulate a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite inside the nose cone of a United Launch Alliance-built Delta II launch vehicle and prepared the instrument for its scheduled launch.
The company said Thursday the NOAA-NASA team’s Joint Polar Satellite System-1 weather satellite will be deployed from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Nov. 14 at 1:47 a.m. PST.
JPSS-1 will collect data on the planet’s atmosphere, land surface and oceans and feed information to the NOAA National Weather Service models to provide forecasters with actionable environment intelligence that can help project weather patterns.
The collected data can also help emergency managers make decisions on how to protect lives and property through early evacuations approximately five to seven days in advance, noted Ball Aerospace.
Alex Chernushin, program manager for the JPSS-1 program at Ball Aerospace, said JPSS-1 is the twelfth spacecraft based on the Ball Configurable Platform 2000 platform.
Ball Aerospace helped produce the satellite bus along with the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite instrument onboard the JPSS-1.
JPSS-1 will also feature capacities similar to the instruments aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System, Cross-track Infrared Sounder and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite.
