Intro music.
Aura will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force base in California aboard a Delta II launch vehicle.
The spacecraft is designed to fly at a near-polar orbit, at 98.2 degrees of inclination.
A polar orbit is one in which the spacecraft flies in a north-south path as the Earth turns below it.
This will put Aura in position to join the A-Train,
a group of satellites that work together to provide a complete picture of environmental change on Earth.
There are four major scientific instruments aboard Aura.
All of them are designed to study the chemistry of the atmosphere, but they all have different ways of doing it.
Together, Aura's cutting edge hardware will provide us with the most comprehensive picture of the air we breathe.