NASA launched a new satellite recently, ushering in the next generation of Earth orbiters designed to track weather and global conditions while providing the military with critical operational data.
The gateway satellite was built under the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program to enhance civilian and military weather forecasting, storm tracking and climate monitoring.
The NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite launched early this morning from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The NPP marks the beginning of the replacement of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite series.
NPP will bridge the gap until the first NPOESS, which has been renamed Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), is ready for launch in the estimated 2014 timeframe. The program effectively merges the civilian and military aspects of monitoring earth and atmospheric conditions.
The launching of NPP is a big step for a program that for years has faced major cost overruns and delays and has been restructured on multiple occasions, most recently in February 2010 by the Obama administration. The restructuring split the procurement. NASA and the NOAA were given primary responsibility for afternoon orbits and the Air Force took charge of morning orbits.
The NPP, which will be used to test new sensors, was originally supposed to launch in 2006. Numerous technical and management challenges placed the program into cost overruns in 2006 and automatically triggered a congressionally mandated review and recertification under the Nunn McCurdy amendment. That resulted in scaling back the scale of the program from six main satellites in three orbits to four satellites in two orbits.
The Obama administration said in 2010 that the baseline life-cycle cost estimate for the program is $13.9 billion, or about double the 2002 estimate of $6.5 billion.
NPP is carrying five science instruments and test key technologies for the JPSS missions and is the first to address the challenge of acquiring a wide range of land, ocean, and atmospheric measurements for Earth system science while simultaneously preparing to address operational requirements for weather forecasting, NASA said.
Ball Aerospace and Technologies [BLL] is the lead contractor for the satellite while Raytheon [RTN] serves as the primary contractor for the ground system. Raytheon also built the sensors carried by the satellite known as the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite.