NASA News
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
John F. Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899
AC 321-867-2468
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gretchen
Cook-Anderson
July 15, 2004
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-0836)
Lynn Chandler
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-2806)
RELEASE: 04-217
AURA SPACECRAFT LAUNCHED, TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE AIR WE BREATHE
Aura, a mission dedicated to the health of the Earth's
atmosphere, successfully launched today at 6:01:59
a.m. EDT (3:01:59 a.m. PDT) from the
Western Range of Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), Calif., aboard a
Boeing Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation occurred at 7:06 a.m. EDT (4:06 a.m. PDT), inserting
Aura into a 438-mile (705-kilometer) 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. We look forward to the Aura satellite offering us
historic insight into the tough issues of global air quality, ozone recovery
and climate change," said NASA Associate Administrator for Earth Science
Dr. Ghassem Asrar. "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.”
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 also will 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.
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'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).
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 Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
constructed TES and MLS. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., manages
the Aura mission.
"Many people have worked very hard to reach this point and the entire team
is very excited," said Aura Project Manager Rick Pickering of Goddard.
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
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