SpaceX launched a commercial communications satellite with a NASA Earth research sensor early Friday morning (April 7).
The Intelsat 40e satellite was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT).
The Falcon 9’s booster landed on the company’s drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean little under nine minutes after liftoff, marking its fourth mission.
The rocket’s top stage deployed Intelsat 40e on time 32.5 minutes after launch.
Intelsat 40e, a high-throughput geostationary satellite, will serve government and commercial customers in North and Central America.
The Colorado-based Maxar Technologies satellite hosts NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) payload.
Intelsat 40e will enter a geostationary orbit (GEO) at 91 degrees West, 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth’s equator. From there, the satellite will communicate and allow TEMPO to collect hourly air pollution photos over North America.
Geostationary orbiters seem in a permanent location over Earth, while low Earth orbiters complete 16 orbits each day and may only pass over a given area once per day.
TEMPO uses ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light to detect lower troposphere ozone, formaldehyde, and nitrogen dioxide.
“We have numerous additional missions that produce studies of atmospheric elements and atmospheric composition,” NASA Earth Science Division chief Karen St. Germain told reporters April 5. “TEMPO’s geostationary appearance will be distinctive.”
St. Germain stated that it will deliver higher-resolution data than prior missions.
Ball Aerospace created TEMPO, which can function beyond its 20-month main mission. Intelsat 40e’s two enormous solar arrays power it for 15 years.
Maxar and NASA officials praised the hosted payload strategy in the media teleconference.
“The TEMPO initiative really is a win-win-win for the key institutions participating,” stated Maxar TEMPO project manager Aaron Abell. “It lets governments utilise Maxar’s heritage satellite design’s underused capacity. Intelsat is reimbursed for supporting the TEMPO mission, lowering the government’s space access cost.”
“NASA’s overall cost is around $210 million,” said Kevin Daugherty, TEMPO project manager at Langley Research Center in Virginia. “Around $90 million went on instrument development. Our contractors have hosted and integrated TEMPO, while the rest has gone to assist engineering and management.”
Daugherty noted that NASA is conducting a “lessons learned session” to determine how to approach future commercial collaborations.
SpaceX’s 23rd launch of the year was Friday’s Falcon 9 landing, its 184th orbital rocket landing overall.