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Credit: SpaceX
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has just started an advanced European weather satellite and organized its landing at a ship at sea.
The Falcon 9 was with the MTG-Säder (MTG-S1) with the MTG-Säder (MTG-S1) in the direction of geostation test orbit today (July 1) at 5:04 p.m. EST (2104 GMT) at 5:04 p.m.
The first stage of the rocket returned to earth about 8.5 minutes later and landed on the SpaceX drone ship “Read the instructions” that was stationed in the Atlantic.
The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is on the deck of a drone ship shortly after the MTG-S1 weather satellite starts. | Credit: SpaceX
According to a SpaceX mission description, it was the ninth start and landing for this special booster (the B1085 described). The former flights of the Booster included the Fram2 private Astronaut Mission, the crew 9 flight to the international space station for NASA and a start in January 2025, which sent two private landers in the direction of the moon: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ISPACE’s resilience.
The upper level of Falcon 9 used MTG-S1 about 35 minutes after the upswing today as planned. The satellite will now find its way into the geostationary orbit (Geo), which is 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the earth.
At this height, the orbital speed corresponds to the rotation speed of the earth, which means that satellites are continuously “floating” there over the same field of the planet. For this reason, Geo is a popular destination for the spaceship of weather and information data.
MTG-S1 stops from the upper stage of Falcon 9. | Credit: SpaceX
Other missions for boosters B1085
Crew 9 | Fram 2 | RRT-1 | Blue Ghost Mission 1 | SXM-10 | 3 Starlink missions
MTG-S1 is the second of the third generation meteosate satellites (meteosate). The first was MTG-I (MTG Imagator), who came on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket in December 2022.
The MTG room vehicles are operated by the European organization to exploit meteorological satellites (Eumetsat), an international group based in Germany with 30 Member States.
After a checkout period, MTG-S1 will use its infrared sound instrument to record data on temperature, humidity, wind and trace gases that are used to generate 3D cards in the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of the MTG weather forecast, “said the officers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in a mission description.
The satellite “will deliver part of Europe and part of the north of Africa in a repetition cycle of 15 minutes and offer meteorologists a complete weather view of the region and add data on the cloud formation and the flash of MTG-I,” added.
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MTG-S1 also wears an instrument for another mission: Copernicus Sentinel-4, which is part of the European Union’s straw observation program.
The instrument is an ultraviolet, visible near infrared light (UVN), which, according to ESA officials, monitors air quality over Europe and North Africa every hour.
“The spectrometer delivers high -resolution data that influence the quality of the air that we breathe, including a variety of atmospheric trace gases and pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde,” wrote in the mission description.
“The mission complements the Sentinel 5 and Sentinel 5P missions that provide daily observations on earth from their polar orbit.”
Note from the publisher: This story was updated on July 1 at 5:40 p.m. ET with the news about a successful satelliteh.
