The two Cubesats, founding members of the agency’s TROPICS network, were launched today (May 7) from the company’s runway in New Zealand on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket that took off at 21:00 (01:00 GMT and 13:00). in the afternoon of May 8 local time). Zealand time). About 33 minutes after takeoff, Electron placed the shoebox-sized cube TROPICS satellites into low Earth orbit about 550 kilometers above Earth.

The TROPICS constellation (short for Time-Based Observations of Precipitation Structure and Minor Satellites Constellation and Storm Intensity) will consist of four cubic satellites in low Earth orbit. Rocket Lab will launch the other two satellites in about two weeks if all goes according to plan. (For the constellation to function properly, all four TROPICS satellites must be deployed within a single 60-day period.)

Cubesats TROPICS will measure the formation and development of tropical cyclones and hurricanes hourly with increased accuracy.

“We’re going to get data we’ve never had before, the ability to look at the microwave wavelength region at an hourly rate during storms, to monitor the formation and intensification of a storm,” said Bill, TROPICS Principal Investigator. blackwell He said at a press conference ahead of the April 28 launch. “We hope to improve our understanding of the underlying processes driving storms and ultimately improve our ability to predict and monitor intensity.”

TROPICS program researchers, such as Will McCarthy in NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, see missions like TROPICS as part of an innovation leap to boost more powerful air-focused satellites.

“This is the cube satellite revolution,” McCarthy told reporters at a news conference on April 28. “By complementing larger weather satellites, we’re also getting some new innovations, and also in these small compact sizes… These cubes are the size of a loaf of bread. That’s why I want to emphasize innovation in this mission.”

Rocket Lab is capable of launching from two very different parts of the planet; also takes place on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Station (MARS) in Virginia. Both TROPICS missions were originally planned to launch from Mars, but were moved to New Zealand to take advantage of an earlier launch date. This change allows the constellation to begin before the 2023 Northern Hemisphere hurricane season begins, which officially begins May 15 in the Eastern Pacific. Changing launch locations did not result in significant additional costs for NASA or Rocket Lab. .

“The work was relatively unimportant,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said at a press conference on April 28. “We will do everything we can to make sure we can prepare these spacecraft for storm season, and in this case that meant sending them to New Zealand.”

Initially, the TROPICS constellation was planned to consist of six satellites. But the first two cube satellites were lost when their rocket, supplied by California-based Astra, failed during launch in June 2022. NASA then chose Rocket Lab to launch the remaining four satellites. The TROPICS constellation will not be wasted if Rocket Lab’s second mission experiences any anomalies on its way to orbit.

“If we take only one of the two [запусків] And we’ll still have two satellites, so there’s a lot to learn from this data.” Rocket Lab is working to make the first stage of Electron usable again by rebuilding boosters on several previous flights. However, no rescue operations have taken place today.