ScienceDaily (July 15, 2004) — Aura, a mission dedicated to the health of Earth's atmosphere, successfully launched today at 3:01:59 a.m. Pacific Time from the Western Range of Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation occurred at 4:06 a.m. Pacific Time, inserting Aura into a 705-kilometer (438-mile) orbit.

NASA's latest Earth-observing satellite, Aura will help us understand and protect the air we breathe.

"This moment marks a tremendous achievement for the NASA family and our international partners," said NASA Associate Administrator for Earth Science Dr. Ghassem Asrar. "We look forward to the Aura satellite offering us historic insight into the tough issues of global air quality, ozone recovery and climate change.

"This mission advances NASA's exploration of Earth and will also better our understanding of our neighbors in the planetary system," he added. "Aura joins its siblings, Terra, Aqua and 10 more research satellites developed and launched by NASA during the past decade, to study our home planet, Earth."

"Many people have worked very hard to reach this point and the entire team is very excited," said Aura Project Manager Rick Pickering of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

With the launch of Aura, the first series of NASA's Earth Observing System satellites is complete. The other satellites are Terra, which monitors land, and Aqua, which observes Earth's water cycle.

Aura will help answer three key scientific questions: Is the Earth's protective ozone layer recovering? What are the processes controlling air quality? How is the Earth's climate changing? NASA expects early scientific data from Aura within 30-90 days.

Aura will also help scientists understand how the composition of the atmosphere affects and responds to Earth's changing climate. The results from this mission will help scientists better understand the processes that connect local and global air quality.

Each of Aura's four instruments is designed to survey different aspects of Earth's atmosphere. Aura will survey the atmosphere from the troposphere, where mankind lives, through the stratosphere, where the ozone layer resides and protects life on Earth.

Aura's four instruments are: the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS); the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS); the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI); and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed and manages MLS and TES. HIRDLS was built by the United Kingdom and the United States. OMI was built by the Netherlands and Finland in collaboration with NASA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Aura mission.

The Microwave Limb Sounder is intended to improve our understanding of ozone in Earth's stratosphere, which is vital in protecting us from solar ultraviolet radiation. The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer is an infrared sensor designed to study Earth's troposphere and to look at ozone and other urban pollutants.

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth System Science to improve prediction of climate, weather and natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space.

For Aura information and images on the Internet, visit:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0517aura.html and

http://www.nasa.gov/aura.

For more information about MLS on the Internet, visit:

http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/.

For more information about TES on the Internet, visit:

http://tes.jpl.nasa.gov/.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

This is a photograph of the Aura satellite in the clean room prior to launch. Credit: Northrop Grumman

Related Stories

NASA's Aura Satellite Sheds New Light On Air Quality And Ozone Hole (Dec. 22, 2004) — NASA scientists announced the agency's Aura spacecraft is providing the first daily, direct global measurements of low-level ozone and many other pollutants affecting air ...  > read more

International Science Team Measures Arctic's Atmosphere (Jan. 31, 2005) — An international team of scientists embarked this week on a journey to improve modeling of global-scale air quality and climate change predictions by conducting high quality measurements of the ...  > read more

NASA's AURA Satellite Peers Into Earth's Ozone Hole (Dec. 8, 2005) — NASA researchers, using data from the agency's AURA satellite, determined the seasonal ozone hole that developed over Antarctica this year is smaller than in previous ...  > read more

NASA Flight Facility Successfully Launches Nanosatellite (May 20, 2009) — NASA's PharmaSat nanosatellite successfully launched Tuesday (May 19) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. PharmaSat will investigate the effects of antifungal ...  > read more

NASA Successfully Launches Environmental Satellite (May 24, 2005) — NASA successfully launched a new environmental satellite today for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Odorless Paint