Energetic music.
Malissa: For NASA, the mission goes well beyond just the science and engineering. It's also about public awareness. That's where the television crews from Kennedy Space Center and Goddard Space Flight Center come into play. On the days leading up to launch, the crews work night and day to guarantee the public has access to live coverage of press conferences, briefings, and interviews with scientists. The goal is to make sure the public knows exactly what NPP is all about. It's two o'clock in the morning here at Vandenberg Air Force Base and NASA Television crews are getting ready to do interviews with former astronaut Piers Sellers for TV stations coast to coast.
Piers: Ok, so here we are. It's the middle of the night, two days before the launch in the Mission Director Control Center, which is where we are at. So, all of the stations are getting the exciting news, building up to the launch of NPP. So, we are trying to create some awareness of what's going on. Why is this important from a media point of view...well, this is science, technology being used to help people. This is important. So, we keep striving to get the message out there that this is science serving people in a positive way. People rely on weather forecast, particularly forecast for extreme weather. But it takes a lot of money, time, effort, and scientific sweat to get that information prepared and out to people. And I think it's interesting for people to realize how it's done. You have to have these big satellites; you have to have computer models and a lot of smart people working very hard to get you the information.
Justin: This satellite is going to provide tremendous amount of information for what I do as a meteorologist. Visible images, data going into computer models but there is also going to be data that goes into long-range models for climate assessment. These are all things that impact all of us and the planet we live in. So, while we live down here and we step outside and we can look up, it is so important that we have our technology and we have the resources, the manpower and the brain power, to put something up in space that can look back down and give us that better perspective.
Malissa: NASA has joined the social media movement to help spread the NPP message. They've invited a couple dozen enthusiastic bloggers and journalists for a Tweet Up. The group is taking part in a series of all-day events to learn about NPP and share the message through their social media networks.
Piers: I thinks it's important to realize what we are doing in this program. It's an important expensive program, a lot of tax payers money but it provides a hug benefit back to the tax payer. Your weather prediction, your climate record, climate understanding, all of that is important to people. So, we want to explain to them what we are about. Launch countdown announcer: Engine start, one, zero, and lift off (rocket launch roaring sound) of the Delta II with the NPP satellite, blazing the way to a new technology for climate research and weather forecasting. Roaring rocket sound. Roaring rocket sound. Beeping. Beeping.