NASA launches its Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) spacecraft on Monday December 12 2016, scheduled for 8:24 am EST (6:54 pm IST).
The launch is taking place on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the aim to have an improved forecast about hurricane intensity.
The latest updates, images and news briefing regarding the same will be carried out near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, located in Florida.
You can check the launch of the CYGNSS spacecraft right here at NASA TV
In a press conference held earlier this Saturday, on December 10 2016, at Kennedy Space Center, Christine Bonniksen, the CYGNSS program executive at NASA stated: "The mission will focus on surface winds."
"We can get information to better understand how those hurricanes grow," Bonniksen added.
Here's all you need to know about the CYGNSS spacecraft:
- Eight little satellites have been launched to low-Earth orbit on from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
- The launch took place on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket.
- This launch aims at enhancing the forecasts of hurricanes by NASA.
- The space-based system CYGNSS have been developed by the University of Michigan along with the Southwest Research Institute.
- CYGNSS is developed for understanding the interactions amid the air near the center of the storm and the sea.
- An improvement of around 50 percent in forecasting tropical cyclones have been observed since 1990s, but the same progress regarding the hurricane intensity forecast was nil.
- CYGNSS will measure the ocean surface winds constantly and precisely through the life span of the hurricanes and tropical storms.
- The measurement of surface winds within and around hurricane's nucleus and inner rainbands is not possible from space. CYGNSS will make scaling these possible now.
