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A Delta II rocket rose into the pre-dawn sky Saturday at Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to place NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite into space for a ground-breaking mission centered on soil moisture.
The rocket, standing some 13 stories high, blasted off from Space Launch Complex-2 at 6:22 a.m., as Vandenberg’s first liftoff of 2015 quickly disappeared into morning clouds.
The booster carried NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive, or SMAP, craft which separated from the rocket approximately an hour after liftoff in an action captured via an on-board camera that transmitted the “quite exceptional” crisp images to Earth.
The SMAP program’s Twitter account marked the milestone with the tweet: “I have separated from the rocket. Space here I come!”
More than two hours after launch, Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted his team had a lot of happy people due the “fantastic start” to their mission.
“We had a terrific ride into space this morning aboard the United Launch Alliance’s Delta vehicle,” Kellogg said. “They deposited us exactly where we wanted to be with very good accuracy and precision.”
With Earth as “a fantastic backdrop,” the on-board camera also showed the solar arrays deploying before the spacecraft became “power positive” and communicated with ground-controllers, he said.
“The observatory health is excellent,” he added.
SMAP, with a price tag of $916 million for development, launch and operations, will join more than a dozen other spacecraft monitoring Earth’s vital signs. The satellite is designed to operate for three years, but is expected to continue beyond that.
Specifically, SMAP is expected to deliver detailed data about about the amount of water in the top two inches of dirt. This information will help in a variety of ways, including drought monitoring, flood control and more.
Data from the spacecraft will be used to create maps detailing soil moisture around the world.
“What a morning …,” said Geoff Yoder, a deputy associate administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “I know a lot of people are eager for the SMAP mission to begin delivering the most accurate and highest resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained.
“This data will benefit not only scientists seeking better understanding of our planet’s climate environment, but it’s also a boon for weather forecasters, agriculture and water resource managers, emergency planners and policy makers,” Yoder added.
“SMAP is another example how NASA is making a difference in people’s lives around the world.”
The satellite boasts two instruments — a radar and a radiometer — that will collect highly detailed data on soil moisture, scientists said. Together they will gather data about water in the top layers of the soil.
SMAP will undergo a checkout period for approximately two weeks before the boom will be deployed, a first step for the blossoming of the reflective antenna with a diameter of 20 feet. The lightweight system was developed by Northrop Grumman Astro Aerospace employees based in Santa Barbara County.
Some 90 days after launch, the satellite will move into a calibration and validation phase. The calibrated data likely will be available some 15 months after launch.
In addition to SMAP, the rocket carried four small spacecraft, dubbed CubeSats, built by college students across the nation under NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellite (ELaNa).
All four nanosatellites, tucked into three bread loaf-size carriers designed and built at Cal Poly, were deployed approximately an hour after the primary payload.
“I think we’re relieved,” said Scott Higginbotham, NASA ELaNa-X mission manager. “I don’t know how else to describe it. … Now the real work begins for the CubeSat teams. They have to go perform their missions.”
Dave Klumpar, principal investigator for one of the CubeSats and director of the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory at Montana State University, noted how valuable the NASA program is for his students.
“It’s one thing to do Powerpoint presentations and studies in an undergraduate environment, and it’s something else to actually get out there, put that learning, that knowledge you’ve gotten from the classroom to work and actually build a piece of hardware, get it to its destination and operate it in the space environment,” he said.
“That’s just huge for the students.”
Showing the high-profile nature of the mission, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. traveled to Vandenberg with plans to observe the launch before unfavorable wind and minor repairs on the rocket delayed the mission to Saturday.
Bolden actually began the day Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery for NASA’s Day of Remembrance in honor of the astronauts who died in three separate space tragedies — Apollo I on Jan. 27, 1967; space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986; and shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003.
“In my comments there, I mentioned to people the best way we could commemorate those we remembered this morning was to press on with the things they would want us to do,” Bolden said. “Absolutely, things like when we launch here … . It’s trying to help us understand our planet better, trying to push humanity farther out into the solar system.”
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.