NPP Satellite Launches Successfully

This past Friday, America's newest polar-orbiting satellite launched into space successfully. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is a joint project between NASA and NOAA to better help make better forecasts.

The NPOESS Prepatory Project (NPP) satellite includes five brand new instruments that will help collect more information on weather data around the world. This includes both surface observations on land and over the oceans.

According to NOAA, NPP will be able to orbit earth every 102 minutes, flying 512 miles above the surface of the earth.

This newly advanced satellite will be able to help diagnose the atmosphere with more detailed information, which will help meteorologists be able to forecast big weather events (severe weather outbreaks, winter storms) with better accuracy and with more advanced notice.

It will be a few more months, however, until the NPP satellite will have data available to view. According to NOAA, it will be 90 days until the satellite begins its operation and replaces the NOAA-19 satellite.

For more information on the NPP satellite, you can go to http://www.noaa.gov/.