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ORLANDO, Fla. – Saturday will mark the final countdown for the Delta II rocket. After nearly 30 years of spaceflight, the United Launch Alliance rocket will take off from California this weekend for the last time.
The Delta II satellite is expected to be launched from the Vandenberg Air Force base in California with the ICESat 2 Earth Science satellite. A satellite from the University of Central Florida, SurfSat, is also on board.
Delta II has been launched more than 150 times since 1989, successfully delivering the rovers of NASA Spirit and Opportunity and the Phoenix Mars Lander on the Martian surface as well as about a dozen satellites in space.
The last launches of Delta II took place in Vandenberg. The final launch of Cape Canaveral took place in 2011, which was also the final launch of Space Launch Complex 17.
NASA's ICESat 2 satellite is synonymous with elevation of ice, clouds and land and is a space laser that will gravitate around the Earth at a speed of 15,600 mph and will measure ice on the surface of the planet. The satellite follows its predecessor, ICESat 1, also launched by a Delta II rocket.
The goal of the mission is to help scientists determine why and how frozen ice is changing due to global warming, according to the space agency. To do this, the laser will fly over the Earth every 91 days, measuring the land ice that accumulates year after year and the sea ice that forms over the ocean when it freezes.
SurfSat is a micro-satellite called CubeSat. Once in space, he will study how sensitive electronic components can be protected from electrons and ions during spaceflight. The CubeSats from the Polytechnic University of California and the University of California have also been selected by NASA for launch with ICESat 2.
Addie Dove, assistant professor of physics at UCF, leads the SurfSat mission. According to Dove, commercial companies could use SurfSat's information to select materials from their spacecraft to protect them.
"Most spacecraft are aluminum, which is a driver. But most of the time, spacecraft surfaces have paints specifically designed for their thermal or optical properties, "said Dove. "These paintings sometimes have unexpected interactions with ions and electrons in the space."
When materials encounter ions and electrons in space, this could be potentially harmful in the evening, frying sensitive equipment during a mission, said Dove.
Dove and his undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students in engineering and physics have been working on the development of SurfSat for several years.
Doctoral candidate James "Jay" Phillips has worked on the team since the beginning. He is now working at the Kennedy Space Center and plans to watch the launch in person from the west coast.
"It's the first satellite I've worked on," Phillips said. "So having the ability to design printed circuit boards and write software for a system sent into orbit was unique."
The launch window opens at 8:46 am eastern time and at 5:46 pm Pacific.
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