NASA has exercised a contract option to launch the NOAA-N polar-orbiting weather satellite aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket in January 2003 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The Lockheed Martin-built satellite will become the fourth in the current advanced generation of weather spacecraft to be launched for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

An artist's concept of a NOAA weather satellite orbiting Earth. Photo: NASA/NOAA

This firm-fixed-price option is covered under the NASA Medium Light (MED-LITE) launch service contract (NAS5-32933), awarded by the agency on Feb. 27, 1996, to McDonnell Douglas Corp. of Huntington Beach, Calif., a subsidiary of The Boeing Company.

NASA's total launch services budget for NOAA-N is approximately $56 million.

The goals of NOAA-N after its launch into polar orbit are to take images and measurements of the Earth's atmosphere, cloud cover and surface, as well as to monitor the proton and electron fluxes near the Earth. The satellite can store and transmit the data from its instruments.

NOAA-N will also be capable of receiving, processing and re-transmitting data from free-floating balloons, buoys, and remote automatic-observation stations around the globe, as well as detecting and re-transmitting search-and-rescue distress signals.

NOAA-N is managed by the Polar Operational Environmental Satellite Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, and is a cooperative effort among NASA, NOAA, the United Kingdom and France. The launch service and launch management are the responsibility of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The most recent NOAA launch was last September when NOAA-L was successfully placed into orbit using a converted Titan 2 ICBM missile. Plans current call for NOAA-M to be launched by a Titan 2 later this summer.