May 20 2005
From The Space Library
NASA launched a new environmental satellite for NOAA, aboard a Boeing Delta 2 7320-10 expendable launch vehicle, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The NOAA- 18 (N), the fourth in the series of five Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) carrying improved imaging and sounding capabilities, would improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events globally, collecting data about Earth's surface and atmosphere. The craft also carried instruments used in COSPAS-SARSAT, the international Search-and-Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System (COSPAS is the Russian acronym for “Cosmicheskaya Sistema Poiska Avariynyh Sudo,” which means “Space System for the Search of Vessels in Distress”). Established in 1982, COSPAS-SARSAT had saved 5,000 lives in the United States and 18,000 worldwide. (Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 619; NASA, “NASA Successfully Launches Environmental Satellite,” news release 05-129, 20 May 2005, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/may/HQ_05129_NOAA_success.html (accessed 14 September 2009).)
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