peter posted on October 28, 2011 12:44
Oct. 28, 1011:
Congratulations to all at NASA, NOAA, and the INNOVIM staff who participated in the development of this unprecedented project known as NPP, or NPOES Preparatory Project.
Liftoff took place 5:48 EDT Friday morning at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base with the NPP satellite aboard a Delta 2 rocket. See video of the launch below.
NPP Project Manager, Ken Schwer, led off a news conference following the launch, stating: "Now the future of NPP starts and we look forward to NPP touching the rest of the world."
The $1.5 billion spacecraft can now begin its mission as the first satellite designed to collect data for both short-term weather forecasting and long-term climate modeling. It will be the precursor to even more capable Earth-observing satellites in the future. More information on NPP capabilities can be found in this comprehensive brochure published by NASA.
INNOVIM is especially proud of the contributions made by its staff led by Dr. Richard Sikorski, INNOVIM Science Data Systems Program Manager, and Mary Hunter, Deputy Program Manager. Additional team members include William Ardanuy, Adrian Brown, Tom DeFelice, Jingsi Gao, John Garner, Ryan Gerard, Mimi Hailu, Alice Isaacman, Trevor Kaplan, Ayub Khan, Gary Lin, Jim Marshall, Ali Rezaiyan, Krishna Tewari, Shyam Vyas, Christine Whalen, Ed Wilson.
Well done!