TITUSVILLE, Fla. — Rocket launches are fast and frequent from Florida’s Space Coast.
▶ WATCH CHANNEL 9 EYEWITNESS NEWS
Channel 9 recently visited the precious cargo for another satellite, which is now being prepped in Titusville.
The special cargo is the GOES-U satellite.
GOES-U is the world’s most advanced geostationary weather satellite.
Read: NASA’s Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problem
The satellite will join a network of spacecraft used to monitor everything from Atlantic hurricanes to space weather.
It’s set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket later this month.
It will then take about a month to get into testing position, then, next April, switch places with and replace the current GOES-16 weather satellite over the eastern Americas and Atlantic.
Read: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ explosion expected to happen over summer, NASA says
The primary instrument, the “Advanced Baseline Imager,” puts out about a terabyte of data each day, from 22,000 miles above Earth.
And a completely new instrument, the compact coronagraph, will look in the other direction toward the sun.
It’s a tool that can aid in predicting solar storms.
Read: NASA says no emergency onboard ISS after ‘disturbing’ medical drill accidentally airs
The GOES-U satellite is set to launch on June 25.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.