Climate Wire | NASA wants to know more about hurricanes caused by climate change.
To support the effort, the space agency plans to launch two small satellites, called CubeSats, into orbit about 350 miles above Earth on Thursday night. These satellites should help scientists better understand what NASA calls “high-impact weather events.” ” or tropical cyclones.
A planned launch at midnight eastern Thursday was canceled due to “strong upper winds”. the agency said. NASA plans to try again at 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
Experts say the CubeSat, roughly the size of a shoebox, combined with two similar satellites launched in May to form a constellation that could guide “the formation and evolution of tropical cyclones, including hurricanes.” It will monitor and rapidly update its observations of storm intensity. We have partnered with Rocket Lab USA Inc., NASA’s commercial partner to launch satellites into space.
NASA’s mission was scaled back from the originally planned six CubeSats following the June 2022 launch failure of an Astra Space rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA rebids the contract for the remaining launches, and Rocket Lab wins the contract.
This joint research mission with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory is called “TROPICS,” an abbreviation for “time-resolved observation of precipitation structure and storm intensity by a constellation of small satellites.” NASA hopes weather data collected from satellites will help explain how and why some tropical cyclones intensify as they approach land.
Scientists have observed temperature profiles in space that favor the formation of storms on the Earth’s surface, and used weather prediction models and radiographic imaging to better predict how such storms would behave, according to NASA. will be predicted to
Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said the mission will “provide scientists and researchers with more accurate and timely storm data, providing better predictions and It is intended to provide advance warning to those in the path of devastating cyclones and hurricanes.”
NASA said the mission represented a “major advance” in the study of tropical systems and said it had an “unprecedented combination of horizontal and temporal resolution to measure the state of the environment and inner core of tropical cyclones on a near-global scale. to provide.”
Rocket Lab nicknamed the launch “Coming to a Storm Near You.” It will fly from a launch facility on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.
The first launch on May 8 was called “Hurricane Rocket”.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides important news for energy and environmental professionals.
