GEORGE DILLER: This is Delta Launch Control at T minus 66 minutes, 55 seconds and counting.
We're about six and a half minutes into the loading of liquid oxygen. That activity is going
smoothly, not much commentary on the communications channels. And that will be going on for about
another 35 minutes or so. It's about a 40-minute operation to load the liquid oxygen aboard. And
after that, the milestone to follow will be the steering checks of the engines on the second stage followed by the first stage.
Here with us now at the public affairs console is Mike Mignogno, the Polar Satellite Program Manager for NOAA and responsible for NOAA-N.
Mike, welcome. And NOAA-N does a lot more than take photographs of the Earth below as it rotates.
It has a lot of unique capabilities because of the instruments that are on board. Can you give us some idea of
the kind of things that it can do for forecasters? MR. MIGNOGNO: Thanks, George.
And, NOAA-N, in addition to having its imaging capabilities to take a look at weather systems and
be able to assess sea surface temperatures and vegetation index, has a set of instruments on it
that actually takes vertical profiles of the atmosphere, gives us what the structure of the
temperature is through the atmosphere as well as relative humidity, which is a really important key
or fuel into the numerical weather models. We also have an instrument on there that looks
at the ozone layers in the upper atmosphere, which is very important to understanding ozone concentrations there.
And we have the search and rescue capabilities that you mentioned earlier in one of your
interviews, plus the capability to do data collection, which is to collect information from
both stationary and moving platforms on the surface of the Earth.
You can maintain (inaudible) from ocean buoys to tracking animals in the wild.
MR. DILLER: So does this include -- a lot of times I'll see, by a river, I'll see some kind of what looks
like an antenna by a bridge or something. Is that sending data to a NOAA satellite?
MR. MIGNOGNO: Could very possibly be, yes. These stations are all over the world, on land as well as in the oceans.
MR. DILLER: We have some animation now that we'd like to show. And, Mike, if you could talk to
it, because it kind of explains a little bit about what the satellite is doing.
MR. MIGNOGNO: Okay. This is animation of showing the satellite circling the Earth. And we'll
see a couple of animations of different products that the satellite data processing system produces.
There's a time lapse of a series of polar-orbiting items put together showing imagery of cloud
surfaces. This is sea surface temperature over a period of time.
This is near the end. There appears to look like snow and ice retreating. This is a vegetation
index. You can see things going back and forth in there. There was a picture there of the El Nino.
And there -- the last picture there was of, again, snow and ice indicating snow retreating during the season.
MR. DILLER: Talk to us a little bit, again, about the orbit. This orbit is fairly unique, in
that it crosses at the same time. Is it locally or across the equator? Or how does that work?
MR. MIGNOGNO: It's designed to cross the equator going north at 2:00 p.m. So every time the
satellite orbit -- satellite crosses in its orbit at the equator, it's two o'clock local time there.
It's the approximate same time at other locations, but whatever that time is,
that's the time at different latitudes each day. And that's why the satellite is called sun-synchronous and it's locked on at that
2:00 p.m. equator crossing time, going north-south. MR. DILLER: Talk a little bit more about the
emergency rescue capability. What's on the satellite that supports that?
MR. MIGNOGNO: We have instruments on there that if someone is in trouble and their emergency
locator beacon goes off and a satellite is in the area, it can pick up that distress signal. That's
then provided to, on the surface, to something called a local user terminal.
That information then is transferred to one of several mission control centers, which NOAA has a
mission control center in the US. And then that's sent out to rescue control centers and then help is dispatched.
And as you mentioned earlier, over the time that we've flown this search and rescue capabilities, some 18,000 people worldwide have been
saved, almost 5,000 in the US. So it's about 200 people in the US benefit from that system every
year. And through the first quarter of this year, we've already had -- saved 33 lives.
MR. DILLER: And another way of bringing this to -- down to people on the ground, if we have a
farmer, say, here in Santa Maria or Lompoc, how do we extend this to what it means to someone growing flowers here in Santa Maria?
MR. MIGNOGNO: It's the basic local weather forecast that these -- this information goes into
the National Weather Service forecast models. The output from that gets transmitted to both the
National Weather Service sites and to private weather systems, like the Weather Channel and gets
out to meteorologists -- meteorological local weather forecasters.
And in turn, it helps the local forecaster know what the chances of precipitation are, what the
temperature is going to be, what the winds are going to be over the next day to couple days.
MR. DILLER: So it's actually part of the local forecast?
MR. MIGNOGNO: Oh, it's integral to the local forecast.
MR. DILLER: Tell us something about what's coming up in polar orbitting satellites. NOAA-N is now, but what's the future?
MR. MIGNOGNO: Well, we have, of course, NOAA-N Prime is the next satellite to go in this series.
It will be the last one in the POES series. We have, right now, an international agreement
with European organizations for the exploitation of meteorological satellites, MetOp. We have an
arrangement with them where they're going to fly several of our instruments over the next ten years,
starting next year. And we'll be getting the data from them, sharing it.
Looking longer term to the 2010 time frame is when the first of the N-POES satellites will be flying.
This is the integrative program that merges the best of the DOD meteorological satellites, our meteorological
satellites, civilian side, plus some EOS activity. And that will bring a new set of instruments to the
users with many -- with much improved capabilities and hope they have a big impact on the applications that they'll all drive.
MR. DILLER: So near term, the next satellite to be launched is I guess what we call NOAA-N Prime. Is that identical to NOAA-N?
MR. MIGNOGNO: It will be identical. Have a little bit of improvement in the data collection
capability, but other than that, it's pretty much identical.
And we're looking forward to the launch of the first MetOp satellite next year. What they will be
doing is taking over the morning orbit for us and we'll have our set of instruments on there as well
as some instruments on EUMETSAT's satellite that we're very much interested in getting ahold of and
getting that data into our applications and weather models.
MR. DILLER: Mike, thank you very much. And I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing this
satellite on orbit and a very successful checkout. And 45 days or so, hopefully it's operating for NOAA.
MR. MIGNOGNO: That's right. We're really looking forward to this one.
MR. DILLER: Thank you very much. At T minus 59 minutes, 16 seconds and counting, this is Delta Launch Control.