Receiving much print and broadcast attention was a 1,200-foot-wide asteroid that zipped pass Earth yesterday, affecting no one, while last month’s launch of a NASA satellite for climate research and improved weather forecasting --- with output affecting millions in the U.S. alone --- received scant coverage, notes Grumpy Editor.
With the asteroid, editors, naturally, are always interested in objects (this one the size of a city block) hurtling through the atmosphere, even though this chunk passed Earth 201,700 miles away while traveling about 29,000 miles per hour.
Meanwhile, the Oct. 28 California launch of a $1.5 billion Earth-observing satellite, the size of a minivan, with new technology to beef up weather forecasting and climate research receives limited coverage.
For newspapers, maybe it's because the lengthy nine-word identification --- National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project --- is difficult to fit into a headline.
Labeled NPP for short, it carries five instruments to study temperature and water in the atmosphere, how clouds and aerosols affect temperature, and how plants on land and in the ocean respond to environmental changes.
NPP’s daily observations transmit about four terabytes of data. That’s equivalent to about 800 DVDs.
Expected to operate at least to the end of 2016, NPP is one of 14 Earth observation missions managed by NASA.
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