[SatNews] Weather doesn't come from the weather channel.

Much of the weather forecasting we rely on every day comes from polar orbiting satellites that provide up to five days of advance warning about severe weather. These satellites also provide 93 percent of the data used in National Weather Service forecast models. Just last week, President Obama reiterated that weather satellites are critical to our nation’s infrastructure.

Ball Aerospace has completed final compatibility testing for NPP – the nation’s next weather satellite – and the five scientific instruments that will fly aboard the satellite when it launches from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, slated for October 25. Under contract to Goddard Space Flight Center, Ball Aerospace designed and built the NPP satellite bus and one of the satellite’s five advanced-technology instruments, and integrated all of the instruments.

NASA’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) is the nation’s next generation operational weather and climate mission. The remote-sensing instruments aboard NPP will measure the Earth’s atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological activity and cloud and aerosol properties. NPP will bridge critical weather data collection requirements as it awaits launch of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) later this decade, already in development at Ball Aerospace.