NASA’s latest pair of quadrilateral satellites designed to track tropical cyclones on an hourly basis, a project that could predict storms leading to devastating storms.
An Electron rocket from the company’s Rocket Lab has taken off from Mahia in northern New Zealand with two new satellites on board. The same American company had already launched two other satellites at the beginning of the month.
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said he was “proud” of the success of these two launches. As a result, the constellation could be deployed “by the time of 2023,” the statement said.
The satellites are the size of a shoe and will be deployed to an altitude of about 550 kilometers. They will have the ability to spend every hour of tropical cycles, which are called hurricanes in the North Atlantic, or typhoons in the Pacific, towards six hours.
The information collected by the mission, called TROPICS, about rainfall, temperature and humidity levels, allows the weather conditions to be improved.
NASA will initially have six satellites
It will be possible to know, for example, where the tornado will make landfall and with what intensity, which will warn the local residents involved in time and organize eventual evacuations.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the Joint Typhoon Center (JTWC), both in the United States, will benefit greatly from this new information.
“As a Florida resident, I know how important timely and accurate weather forecasting is to millions of Americans,” NASA Chief Bill Nelson said in a statement.
The constellation was initially supposed to have six satellites instead of four, but the first two were lost when a rocket from the US company Astra suffered damage shortly after liftoff last year.
As the surface of the oceans warms, hurricanes become more powerful, scientists say. Hurricane Ian, which devastated Florida in 2022, claimed dozens of lives and caused more than $100 billion in damage, making it by far the world’s costliest natural disaster last year. Nor
