CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astra will try to launch two satellites for NASA from Florida on Sunday, June 12, that can observe and research tropical storms.
TROPICS-1 would be the first of three launches for the NASA mission.
“To get the data they need, they need to be launched into three different low inclination orbits, carefully spread apart from each other,” in accordance to Astra’s website. “These orbits allow the satellites to cover the right latitudes for tropical storms, while also maximizing how often they revisit a given storm each day – so we learn as much as we can about how those storms evolve.”
In whole, a constellation of six small satellites will likely be launched (the primary two throughout Sunday’s launch) with the objective of bettering the scientific understanding of those storms. Dr. William Blackwell, who’s a principal investigator for the NASA TROPICS mission, says tropical cyclones have introduced challenges for some time for scientists provided that they’re “notoriously difficult to observe and yet vitally important to our everyday lives.”
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Liftoff is scheduled for 12 p.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. You can watch it reside when it occurs within the FOX 35 News App.