FASTAT launch on its way

Launch of the FASTSAT Satellite is scheduled for this Friday night, November 19, at 8:24 PM ET on a Minotaur IV launch vehicle from the Alaska Aerospace Corporations Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

FASTSAT (Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite) is NASA’s first microsatellite designed to create a capability that increases opportunities for secondary, scientific and technology payloads, or rideshares, to be flown at lower cost than previously possible. It's carrying six different scientific payloads.

Three science instruments, designed to monitor space weather and gauge how it affects the Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetosphere, were built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, in partnership with the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. They are:

• TTI (Thermosphere Temperature Imager),

• MINI-ME, a low-energy neutral atom imager to detect neutral atoms formed in the plasma population of the Earth's outer atmosphere to improve global space weather prediction,

• PISA (Plasma and Impedence Spectrum Analyzer).