NASA Launches Aura Satellite

ukcollin writes "NASA successfully launched the Aura satellite today after several previous failed attempts. The Aura satellite was launched by a 12-story Delta 2 rocket, at 6:01am (EST) from Vandenberg AFB in California. The satellite is reported to have cost in excess of $785 million dollars, and its main mission will be to study the Earth's ozone to try and determine if the ozone hole is shrinking or increasing. Although it will be focused on the stratosphere (the ozone layer), it will also be tracking pollution, climate changes, etc. by scanning and analyzing each of Earth's atmospheric levels all the way down to the troposphere."

Comments

Spaceflight Now status

[brownpau]

Also see SpaceflightNow's Live Status Report.

19 min till first post?

[Retric]

I guess nobody cares how the ozone doing? Or perhaps $785 million is not what it used to be.

Or maybe launching something into space is not a big deal and even if people are willing to debate the results of science even though they don't care about the people / things that carry it out. PS: 19 min till first post?

A little irony

[Neil Blender]

The Delta 2 rocket is the third most atmospheric polluting rocket currently being used in the world (behind the Space Shuttle and Titan 4s). Every launch creates a mini hole in the ozone layer due to emissions from the solid fuel rockets spewing out hydrogen chloride and aluminum oxide.

Re:A little irony

[Xentax]

Um, not that I automatically disbelieve you or anything, but could you elaborate and/or cite some sources?

The shuttle SRBs separate pretty early in the launch process - I wouldn't think any of their exhaust would be high enough off the ground to make it to the ozone layer.

Let's not forget the scale, either -- even the shuttle pales in comparison to, say, the amount of CFCs put into the atmosphere (and I mean up where it counts) by volcanic eruptions (though I haven't done the math on amount per eruption and eruption rate vs. the amount and rate of rocket launches).

I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want some real data on how solid rockets are impacting the ozone layer, given their launch profile.

Xentax

Re:A little irony

[shiwala]

The Delta 2 rocket is the third most atmospheric polluting rocket currently being used in the world (behind the Space Shuttle and Titan 4s). Every launch creates a mini hole in the ozone layer due to emissions from the solid fuel rockets spewing out hydrogen chloride and aluminum oxide.

Interesting...I had never given that much thought until now. For anyone else who's interested, here's more info on rocket emissions.

Re:A little irony

[Neil Blender]

Um, not that I automatically disbelieve you or anything, but could you elaborate and/or cite some sources?

Here is an article.

Please note that I made no claim to the amount of ozone a single rocket launch depletes, it is fairly small. But rockets do destroy ozone, lots of rockets are launched every year, and the number of launches is undoubtedly going to increase as time goes on.

tis where I work

[boarder]

In some of the replies to this post, you and others have cited stories by the Aerospace Corp (aero.org). This happens to be where I work and they took us on a tour of the labs researching exactly what you are talking about.

The Air Force is extremely concerned about the pollution by their rockets. The EELV program (the new launch vehicles by Lockheed and Boeing, Atlas V and Delta IV) now has emissions as one of its factors when they finally decide on the rocket to use. Side note: the USAF originally wanted both rockets to launch and compete against each other, but now Congress wants them to decide on only one rocket. Someone is going to be hurt badly by this: either Lockheed, Boeing or the taxpayer.

I can't say which (delta or atlas) pollutes more (I'm probably not allowed to say, either), but I know the issue is being researched.

Laser printer and photocopy the planet to safety

[Andy Mitchell]

It just occured to be that as laser printers and photcopiers generate ozone, if we all just print more stuff on paper made from sustainable forestry we will have all the ozone we need and remove surplus CO2 from the atmosphere :-)

Now, before anyone takes me too seriously and prints a copy of every RFC ever written "to save the planet", this doesn't really work. For a start ozone at low altitude is just a toxic gas that will not help protect us from UV....

Re:'Take the A-Train', from NASA

[maddog42]

The first A-train satellite was Terra, launched in 2001. It and Aqua have similar sensor suites, geared towards terrestrial surface observation, whereas Aura carries no imaging (visible or near-ir) sensors. The biggest problem with having so many birds so close together in the time domain is that it's very difficult - without large expenditures - to track more than one at a time. As it is, Aura will conflict with Aqua (1330-1400 GMT ascending nodes). Fortunately, unless you're working in a heavily interdisciplinary environment, you will probably only need to track one of the two.