Hi everybody,

finally this couple of satellites were launched today... Do you know how long will it take for them to "catch" the A-train of satellites?

Regards

I read it's about 30 - 32 days of on orbit checkout and orbital manouvers to move into the A-Train.

Doug

Info about the A-Train.

from TFA:

For much of its life, the A-Train will be maintained in orbit within 15 minutes of the leading and trailing spacecraft while traveling at over 15,000 miles per hour. CloudSat and CALIPSO will be controlled to an even finer requirement, within 15 seconds of each other, so that both instrument suites will view the same cloud area at nearly the same moment. This capability is crucial for studying clouds, which have lifetimes often less than 15 minutes.

Click to view attachment

Thanks a lot Doug and paxdan

Nice photo of the CloudSat/Calipso launch:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/...p3?img_id=17260


Two computer renderings of what the satellites look like in Earth orbit:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/...p3?img_id=17258

Did anyone watch the launch replay from The Spacearium?

I thought it was pretty cool the way the tracking camera obviously had a great deal of thermal IR sensitivity - at 06:30 into the clip you can see the swirls of hot exhaust mixing with the atmosphere when MECO occurs - normally this is much less spectacular in visible light. Also, I'm wondering if the vehicle fairing becoming progressively brighter at earlier stages of flight has anything to do with friction heating as it goes through max-Q?

First CloudSat Images Wowing Scientists

Washington, D.C. (SPX) Jun 07, 2006

The first images from NASA's new CloudSat satellite already are revealing never-before-seen 3-D details about clouds. Mission managers tested the flight and ground system performance of the satellite's Cloud-Profiling Radar in late May, and they found it to be working perfectly.

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/First_Clo...Scientists.html