First-of-Its-Kind Satellite Launches to Track Earth's Weather Like Never Before
By Sarah Lewin, Space.com Associate Editor | November 18, 2017 06:22am ET

The new Joint Polar Satellite System-1 satellite, or JPSS-1, launched into orbit atop a United Launch Alliance-built Delta II rocket at 4:47 a.m. EST (0947 GMT), lighting up the predawn sky over its Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The successful liftoff came after two scrubbed launch attempts earlier this week due to high winds and boats inside the launch range restriction zone offshore.

"Things went absolutely perfect today," NASA launch manager Omar Baez said after the JPSS-1 launch. "The nation's got another wonderful weather asset up in space." [The JPSS-1 Weather Satellite's Mission in Pictures]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in partnership with NASA, operates both geostationary satellites, like GOES-16, which stay in a fixed spot over Earth as they orbit, as well as polar-orbiting satellites, like Suomi NPP, which launched in 2011. Suomi NPP was originally intended to test the technology in store for JPSS-1, officials said at a news conference Sunday (Nov. 12), but it has become a valuable weather and Earth analysis satellite.

"This is huge," Greg Mandt, director of the JPSS program, said during live commentary just after the dazzling liftoff of JPSS-1. "JPSS 1 is part of a national polar orbiting weather satellite program, and we really need this because 85 percent of all the date from our weather forecast models come from this series of weather satellite.We're looking forward to getting good data from this satellite."

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