A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket simply launched a sophisticated European climate satellite tv for pc and aced its touchdown on a ship at sea.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from historic Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the present day (July 1) at 5:04 p.m. EST (2104 GMT), carrying the MTG-Sounder (MTG-S1) satellite tv for pc towards geostationary switch orbit.
The rocket’s first stage got here again to Earth as deliberate about 8.5 minutes later, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship “Simply Learn the Directions,” which was stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
It was the ninth launch and touchdown for this specific booster (which is designated B1085), based on a SpaceX mission description. Among the many booster’s earlier flights have been the Fram2 non-public astronaut mission, the Crew-9 flight to the Worldwide House Station for NASA and a January 2025 launch that despatched two non-public landers towards the moon: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience.
If all goes based on plan, the Falcon 9’s higher stage will deploy MTG-S1 about 35 minutes after liftoff in the present day. The satellite tv for pc will then make its method to geostationary orbit (GEO), which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.
At this altitude, orbital pace matches Earth’s rotational pace, which means satellites there “hover” over the identical patch of the planet repeatedly. For that reason, GEO is a well-liked vacation spot for climate and reconnaissance spacecraft.
Different missions for booster B1085
MTG-S1 is the second of the Meteosat Third Era (MTG) satellites to take flight. The primary was MTG-I (MTG Imager), which launched atop an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket in December 2022.
The MTG spacecraft are operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), a world group primarily based in Germany that has 30 member states.
After present process a checkout interval, MTG-S1 will use its infrared sounder instrument “to seize knowledge on temperature, humidity, wind and hint gases which are used to generate 3D maps of the ambiance, enhancing the accuracy of MTG’s climate prediction,” European Space Agency (ESA) officers stated in a mission description.
The satellite tv for pc “will present protection of Europe and a part of northern Africa on a repeat cycle of quarter-hour, offering meteorologists with a whole climate image of the area, complementing knowledge on cloud formation and lightning from MTG-I,” they added.
MTG-S1 additionally carries an instrument for one more mission: Copernicus Sentinel-4, which is a part of the European Union’s Earth-observation program.
The instrument is an ultraviolet, seen, near-infrared mild (UVN) spectrometer, which is able to monitor air high quality over Europe and North Africa each hour, based on ESA officers.
“The spectrometer delivers high-resolution knowledge on gases that have an effect on the standard of the air we breathe, together with a variety of atmospheric hint gases and pollution similar to nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde,” they wrote within the mission description.
“The mission will complement the Sentinel-5 and Sentinel-5P missions, which give day by day observations of the Earth from their polar orbits.”