Watch Rocket Lab launch 2 tiny NASA hurricane-watching probes early Thursday

The second set of NASA's TROPICS cubesats will launch on their hurricane-studying mission early Thursday , and you can watch the action live.Electron vehicle from the company's Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand's North Island, during a 70-minute window Thursday that opens at midnight EDT ., whose name is short for"Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Small Sats.

. It's hoped that the four satellites will all be in operation in time for the start of the 2023 hurricane season in North America., and the intensity of these storms is also increasing," Jane McNichol, mission manager at Rocket Lab, said during a prelaunch press conference on May 7.development may only be able to check in on these storms every couple of hours, but within that time, we might see a storm increase in intensity quite a bit," she added.

The rapid-refresh microwave measurements TROPICS will make is a major boost, NASA officials have said. Current weather-tracking satellites can make similar measurements, but only once every six hours. Rocket Lab is the second company to launch TROPICS cubesats. The first, California-based Astra, attempted to loft two of them in June 2022, but its rocketduring flight and the cubesats were lost. NASA then selected Rocket Lab to launch the remaining four TROPICS craft over two missions.

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