Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) is ushering in 2016 with a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch scheduled for Jan. 17. It’ll be the base’s first launch of the year.
The Falcon 9 rocket will be used to haul a satellite into space that’ll monitor global sea surface heights and how tropical cyclones intensify, according to 30th Space Wing Vice Cmdr. Colonel Shane Clark, who gives the final authority to launch.
Called the Jason-3 satellite, it’s an international mission between French space agency CNES, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and NASA, and is led by the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration.
Data gathered by the satellite will be used for research and to enhance weather forecasts, according to Clark.
“Jason-3 data will also benefit fisheries management, marine industries, and research into human impacts on the world’s oceans,” Clark said in a statement, adding that the mission is planned to last anywhere between three and five years.
The launch is planned for Sunday, Jan. 17, at 10:42 a.m. at the Space Launch Complex-4 at VAFB.
SpaceX, which maintains a launch facility at VAFB, is a Hawthorne, Calif.-based company headed by billionaire Elon Musk, who is one of the men leading research into commercial space travel.
In 2014 Pasadena-based Virgin Galactic, led by fellow billionaire Sir Richard Branson, unsuccessfully launched a test flight of his company’s SpaceShipTwo craft, which disintegrated in mid-air, killing its co-pilot and seriously injuring the pilot.
SpaceX made history in December 2015 when it launched a Falcon 9 rocket and landed it vertically back on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Florida—the first time a rocket had been used in such a way.
This article appears in Jan 14-21, 2016.
