{"id":12092,"date":"2020-11-22T00:33:11","date_gmt":"2020-11-21T16:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/photos-sentinel-6-michael-freilich-encapsulated-for-launch\/"},"modified":"2020-11-22T00:33:11","modified_gmt":"2020-11-21T16:33:11","slug":"photos-sentinel-6-michael-freilich-encapsulated-for-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/photos-sentinel-6-michael-freilich-encapsulated-for-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich encapsulated for launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite \u2014 named for the former head of NASA\u2019s Earth science division who died of cancer earlier this year \u2014 is affixed to the top of the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket awaiting liftoff from the Central Coast of California at 12:17:08 p.m. EST (9:17:08 a.m. PST; 1717:08 GMT) Saturday.<\/p>\n

The satellite was built by Airbus in Germany and is the size of a small pickup truck. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich carries a radar altimeter, a microwave radiometer, and instruments to precisely locate the satellite in orbit. Working together, the instruments will track changes in sea level down to a few centimeters.<\/p>\n

Rising sea levels are one consequence of climate change, and predecessor satellites show the rate of sea level rise is accelerating, according to mission scientists.<\/p>\n

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is the next in a series of oceanography missions tracking sea level rise, beginning with the U.S.-French Topex\/Poseidon mission that launched in 1992. The Jason 1, Jason 2, and Jason 3 satellites followed Topex\/Poseidon, and an identical satellite to Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich named Sentinel-6B is planned for launch in 2025 to further extend the data record of sea level rise.<\/p>\n

The mission was developed in a partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency, Eumetsat, and NOAA, along with support from the European Commission and the French space agency CNES.<\/p>\n

Working under a $97 million contract with NASA, SpaceX is poised to launch the 2,628-pound (1,192-kilogram) Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base into a 830-mile-high (1,336-kilometer) orbit.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket \u2014 flying with a brand new first stage \u2014 will head south-southeast from Vandenberg to place the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite into an orbit tilted 66 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n

After two burns of the rocket\u2019s second stage, the Falcon 9 is set to deploy the spacecraft around 53 minutes into the mission.<\/p>\n

SpaceX plans to propulsively land the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage booster back at Vandenberg on Landing Zone 4, just west of the rocket\u2019s launch pad on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

These photos show the encapsulation of the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite inside the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s payload shroud at Vandenberg.<\/p>\n

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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Randy Beaudoin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite \u2014 named for the former head of NASA\u2019s Earth science division who died of cancer earlier this year \u2014 is affixed to the top of the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket awaiting liftoff from the Central Coast of California at 12:17:08 p.m. EST (9:17:08 a.m. PST; 1717:08 GMT) Saturday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[941,681,1805,1059,1060,831,479,685],"class_list":["post-12092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airbus","tag-b1063","tag-copernicus","tag-eumetsat","tag-european-commission","tag-european-space-agency","tag-falcon-9","tag-landing-zone-4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}