SpaceX and NASA are showing once again that they’re collaborating very well. The latter aims to launch another weather satellite into space, and it looked for help at the right time and at the right place. SpaceX is willing to help.
According to Space.com, NASA will use a Falcon Heavy rocket built by SpaceX to send the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) into space. However, there’s no use getting too excited just yet, as we’ll have to wait plenty of time for the liftoff.
The launch is scheduled for April 2024
Just a year before NASA will hopefully return humans to the Moon, the GOES-U weather satellite will be launched into space. The satellite’s liftoff will take place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA explained in a statement via its official website:
GOES-U will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans and environment, as well as real-time mapping of total lightning activity and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather.
GOES-U will be operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Humans haven’t landed on the Moon for almost half a century, and NASA plans to fix that during the upcoming Artemis mission. However, this initiative is supposed to be a lot more complex than the Apollo missions from the ‘60s and ‘70s. This time, astronauts aim to build a little base on our natural satellite.
Mars will become the next destination for NASA if everything works as planned with the Artemis mission. The Perseverance rover operated by NASA has even recently revealed that the environment of the Red Planet might be potentially habitable. Of course, it’s way too soon to say that humans could really move to Mars, but the option remains theoretically available for the far future.
GOES-U will be one of the spacecraft from the GOES-R series.
