Falcon 9: StarLink 28

[DocM]

Date: May 26, 2021

Time: 1459 Eastern (1859 UT)

Booster: 1063.2 (Sentinel-6)

Pad: SLC-40.

Landing: ASDS

Fairing recovery: yes

 

 

[JCooper]

Recently I came across the official website of one company that manufactures cameras for different satellites. And it become a starting point for my reflections. I watch every satellite launch to stay aware of all updates in this industry because it interests me, but why we launch so few environmental satellites? I understand that communitcation sats are crucial for our life, but what about our environment? We have a lot of problems with it to solve.

[DocM]

14 hours ago, JCooper said:

Recently I came across the official website of one company that manufactures cameras for different satellites. And it become a starting point for my reflections. I watch every satellite launch to stay aware of all updates in this industry because it interests me, but why we launch so few environmental satellites? I understand that communitcation sats are crucial for our life, but what about our environment? We have a lot of problems with it to solve.

 

More climate science is done by satellite than most people realize. 

 

The US agency NOAA controls a fleet of 16 dedicated environmental satellites, and they're not alone. Many space agencies operate them. 

 

Another technique is mounting environmental payload packages on geostationary or lower Earth orbit satellites which serve other purposes (communications, Earth observation & radar-sats, etc). Piggybacking.

 

Another indirect method of studying the environment using other satellites is the GNSS Radio Occultation technique, viewing global navigation (GPS, etc.) signals through the atmosphere using another satellite.

 

 

 

[DocM]

19 hours ago, JCooper said:

Recently I came across the official website of one company that manufactures cameras for different satellites. And it become a starting point for my reflections. I watch every satellite launch to stay aware of all updates in this industry because it interests me, but why we launch so few environmental satellites? I understand that communitcation sats are crucial for our life, but what about our environment? We have a lot of problems with it to solve.

 

Another item,

 

NOAA is going to leverage commercial Earth observation satellites for climate/weather. There are hundreds of such satellites, and SpaceX could host NOAA or other agency sensors on their StarLink satellites.

 

https://spacenews.com/noaa-adopts-portfolio-approach-to-earth-observation-mission/

Quote

 

NOAA also seeks to profit from the work of commercial partners. NESDIS may be able to take advantage, for example, of the investment SpaceX is making in its Starlink broadband constellation.

 

“We focus on the instruments and the measurements,” Volz said. By marrying NOAA instruments with commercial satellite constellations, the agency may identify “a more efficient approach” to making observations in low Earth orbit, he added.