Amanda Houghton of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne watches a 12-story Delta II rocket with the NASA's Aquarius SAC-D satellite escaped the ground-hugging marine layer blanketing the Central Coast, thundering southward to eventually reach a 408-mile-high sun-synchronous orbit. The United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launch at 7:20 a.m. local from Vandenberg Air Force Base CA. June 10, 2011. (Photo by Gene Blevins/LA DailyNews)
First came the countdown. Then the flare. Then the rocket blast Friday that shook onlookers to their bones.
No one was more thrilled at the fury beneath the Delta 2 that rumbled on an international mission to measure ocean salt than the makers of its rocket engine.
At precisely 7:20:13 a.m., the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS27A ignited with 200,000 pounds of thrust, propelling NASA's Aquarius payload like a needle through the low-slung marine layer over Vandenberg Air Force Base.
"The roar that rushes across the land," Amanda Houghton, a 29-year-old Rocketdyne engineer in charge of pyrotechnic igniters, said before the Canoga Park-made engine's 239th successful mission. "You can feel it in your chest.
"It leaves you speechless." | Click here to see photo gallery.
Nearly 12 minutes later, the rocket had soared 100 nautical miles above the Golden State at 16,979 mph.Then, amost an hour after launch, the NASA control room on the Central Coast north of Lompoc burst into a raucous applause.
For the Argentine-built SAC-D spacecraft had separated from its rocket and was gliding 408 miles above the Earth, its Aquarius instruments ready for unprecedented climate research.
"It's been a smooth launch," Omar Baez, the NASA launch director, said immediately. "The solar arrays did deploy. Exciting. The team is jubilant."
The $400 million mission, a joint venture between NASA and Argentina's space agency CONAE, will employ eight instruments from the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Ca ada Flintridge.
While a fleet of satellites now circles the globe to routinely measure sea level, surface temperatures and wind, collecting information on dissolved ocean salts has largely been limited to ships and buoys.
So researchers designed Aquarius to measure ocean surface salt content via three passive microwave radiometers - sensitive enough to detect the difference of a dash of salt in a gallon of seawater. Another instrument will correct interference from wind and waves.
During the three-year mission, Aquarius will circle the poles every 98 minutes, creating weekly maps of ocean surface salt variations. Other instruments will photograph volcanoes, wildfires and nighttime light.
It joins a European satellite that has been collecting data on sea salt and soil moisture since 2009.
"For NASA, the Aquarius is ... a mission of discovery," said JPL spokesman Alan Buis. "We're proving out a concept - that we can measure ocean salinity in space."
Every 1,000 gallons of ocean water contain roughly 35 gallons of salt. But while salt content remains about the same in oceans covering three-fourths of the planet, brine concentrations greatly vary on the surface.
Measuring such surface salt, scientists say, can lead to better understanding how the ocean and atmosphere work in tandem to affect climate.
It will also help researchers better predict weather patterns such as El Ni o and its counterpart, La Ni a, which affect weather patters around the globe.
Salinity is also key to the natural water cycle - how freshwater moves between the ocean, land and atmosphere through rain and weather patterns.
The satellite data collected from Brazil, Canada, France and Italy will also help researchers predict future climate change.
"This is what NASA and JPL do best, cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art climate science," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at JPL. "Changing salinity ... in the ocean, is one of the canaries in the coal mine of climate change."
He said Aquarius may also reflect changes in California precipitation and water resources.
Natives of Argentina in Los Angeles were thrilled to learn of the Argentine spacecraft with American instruments hovering overhead.
"I am very proud," said Stellamaris Fuire, 47, of West Hills, who emigrated from Buenos Aires 15 years ago and has become a U.S. citizen. "I will put both flags outside my house, both Argentine and U.S."
At Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, it took decades to build the 1950s-era Atlas rocket engine, which morphed into the Saturn 1 engine, which evolved into the RS27A.
Since its first successful launch in 1974, it has become one of the most reliable rocket engines in the world.
"Our history with this engine is 100-percent reliability, with roughly 2,000 parts," said Elizabeth Jones, a 29-year Rocketdyne veteran and program manager for the RS27A, who watched Friday's launch from the NASA control room. "It's quite amazing.
"There's no AAA to get you into space ... My mission isn't over until the satellite is in orbit, where it's supposed to be."
At its peak, the RS27A engine program had 100 workers, who took two years to build each 12-foot-high engine, which would later be fitted to the base of the 125-foot Delta 2.
Today, the engine program in Canoga Park has 25 rocket scientists and technicians, half of whom are women.
Since cancellation of the Space Shuttle Main Engine program this spring, the company has begun issuing layoff notices. It now awaits an order for its potential replacement. Or mainstays such as the RS27A.
There are two more flights scheduled for this fall.
On Friday, Houghton became misty-eyed while watching the Aquarius liftoff. She could picture ignition - the signal from the control room, the main valves opening the kerosene fuel and oxidizer, the events leading to the final flare.
She had grown up in Sacramento within earshot of rocket engine tests and told herself, "I could do that."
And she did.
"I really like my job," said Houghton, who has worked at Rocketdyne five years, before the launch. "That's because we're putting things into space.
"One of the coolest things I can say to my friends is, 'I'm a rocket scientist.'"
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18246807?source=rss
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