NASAKennedy

The Pegasus vehicle is very flexible in launching small spacecraft to a variety of orbits. We chose it because of the perfect match with spacecraft size and weight. Only Pegasus limitation is that it can't launch spacecraft heavier than about 500 kg. Never played KSP. Gotta try it!

Star Trek!

Hurricane Matthew pushed the launch date from mid-November to mid-December. But we can launch the mission on any day of the year. Getting the eight CYGNSS microsatellites on-orbit and operational prior to next year's hurricane season beginning June 1st is very important to our science team. So a December 12th launch date works great. The plan is for CYGNSS to operate for 2 years on orbit, then we hope to have an option (funding $) to extend the mission.

Florida launch site for CYGNSS due to the required science orbit. We're tracking hurricanes with CYGNSS so we need to see the area of the globe +/- 35 degrees north and south of the Equator.

Happy early Birthday! NASA Launch Services Program and Orbital ATK hope to light your biggest candle on 12 December! CYGNSS can operate effectively using only 6 satellites. So 8 was chosen to give both better coverage and a bit of margin should we experience a problem with one or two of the microsatellites.The last pair of satellites will deploy from Pegasus at 14 minutes 34 seconds after drop from the L-1011 aircraft. Major influence: Captain Kirk - a was a real Star Trek nerd growing up.