SpaceX launched a commercial communications satellite with a NASA Earth science instrument early Friday morning (April 7).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off the Intelsat 40e satellite into geostationary transfer orbit at 12:30 AM EDT (0430 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Falcon 9’s first stage made its fourth flight and will be launched again in the near future; The booster successfully landed on the company’s drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean less than nine minutes after takeoff.
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, positioned Intelsat 40e on schedule about 32.5 minutes after launch.
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Intelsat 40e is an advanced geospatial satellite that will provide high-performance connectivity to the company’s government and enterprise customers across North and Central America.
Built by Colorado-based Maxar Technologies, the satellite also carries NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) as a hosted payload.
Intelsat 40e will settle into a geostationary orbit (GEO) about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth’s equator at 91 degrees west. From there, the satellite will play its main communications role, but will also allow TEMPO to take hourly snapshots of air pollution across North America.
Spacecraft in geostationary orbit effectively hover over Earth in a fixed position, whereas low-Earth orbiters complete 16 orbits every 24 hours and can only pass a certain area each day.
TEMPO will measure ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared spectra to detect levels of key pollutants in the lower troposphere, including formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide.
“We have a lot of missions to observe atmospheric components and atmospheric composition,” Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA Headquarters, told reporters at an April 5 press conference. “The real standout difference with Tempo will be the geographical appearance.”
It will provide higher resolution data than other missions, St. Germain added.
TEMPO was developed by Ball Aerospace and has a primary mission of 20 months, but can work beyond this. Intelsat 40e has two large solar arrays to provide power and is designed to operate for at least 15 years.
Both Maxar and NASA officials praised the hosted payload approach during the media call.
“The TEMPO project is really a win-win for the key companies involved,” said Aaron Abel, TEMPO Project Manager at Maxar. “This allows unused capacity in Maxar’s traditional satellite design to be used for government missions. This lowers the cost of space access for the government and lowers the cost for Intelsat, as they are compensated for their support of the TEMPO mission.”
“The total cost to NASA is approximately $210 million,” said Kevin Daugherty, Tempo program manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. “Of that, just over $90 million is for instrument development.” The rest was paid to our contractors for hosting Tempo and then integration, but there was also some support engineering and administration going on.”
Daugherty said NASA is working on a “lessons learned session” to look at how to better implement and approach such partnerships with commercial actors in the future.
Friday’s launch marked SpaceX’s 23rd year, and the Falcon 9’s touchdown was the company’s 184th orbital rocket landing overall to date.
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