A 747 transport aircraft carrying the Jason-3 spacecraft touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California today at 10:34 a.m. PDT, concluding a journey from the Thales Alenia Space manufacturing facility in France.
The spacecraft is being taken to the SpaceX payload processing facility located at Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 4 East, where it will be readied for liftoff August 8 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the French Space Agency and for Europe’s EUMETSAT. Data from Jason-3 will provide meteorologists and scientists with information about oceans that forecasters need to better predict severe weather and devastating hurricanes before they arrive onshore.