BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Launch day isn’t until Tuesday, but on Monday the Atlas V rocket went on a small mission: The slow crawl from the vertical integration facility to the launch site.
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The 3-million-pound, 225-foot-tall rocket crawled at just over 2 mph as it toward Launch Complex 41.
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After launching, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite will take the name GOES-18. It’ll eventually take the position of the most recently launched satellite, now off Hawaii, which had occasional failures.
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With a redesigned system, the new satellite will see from New Zealand all the way to the East Coast of the United States, tracking storms systems approaching from the Pacific.
The launch window opens at 4:48 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. It will be carried on Channel 9 and here on WFTV.com.
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