14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that they have just changed the name of the NASA National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite to NPP Suomi, in honor of late Verner E. Suomi.
Based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the expert is widely considered by many to be the father of modern satellite meteorology. His contributions to this field have far-reaching implications.
Speaking at the latest annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, which was held on January 24, in New Orleans, NASA officials said that the decision came naturally after weighing in everything the expert did for science.
Officially, NASA's latest atmospheric satellite is called the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP). The spacecraft is the most advanced Earth-observing satellite built to date, and also one of the newest to make its way to orbit.
It launched to space aboard a Delta II rocket at 5:48 am EDT (0948 GMT) on October 28, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), on California. Its mission was developed to last for 5 years.
The instruments aboard the satellite will enable climate scientists to assess our planet's long-term climate variations in exquisite detail. In addition, the datasets will help meteorologists make short-term weather forecasts with a higher degree of certainty than currently possible.
“Verner Suomi's many scientific and engineering contributions were fundamental to our current ability to learn about Earth's weather and climate from space,” says NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld, from the Science Mission Directorate, in Washington, DC.
“Suomi NPP not only will extend more than four decades of NASA satellite observations of our planet, it also will usher in a new era of climate change discovery and weather forecasting,” he adds.
Slowly, the United States will start moving away from the Earth Observing System satellites that NASA is managing, and into a new constellation called Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The latter is managed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“The new name now accurately describes the mission,” explains the SMD Earth Science Division director, Michael Freilich.
“Suomi NPP will advance our scientific knowledge of Earth and improve the lives of Americans by enabling more accurate forecasts of weather, ocean conditions and the terrestrial biosphere,” he concludes.