SpaceX launches satellite for Argentina into polar orbit

[sandensea]

Space X launched a satellite for Argentina's space agency, CONAE, from Florida on Sunday evening that will monitor weather and agricultural conditions.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off with the SAOCOM 1B satellite at 7:18 p.m. EDT from Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Clouds that had threatened a delay cleared right before launch time.

The Argentine mission was the first polar orbit launch from Cape Canaveral in more than 50 years.

To reach that orbit, the rocket headed south over the Atlantic Ocean. Most other launches from Florida fly east.

According to the mission description for the program, the satellite's data on soil moisture "will help producers know the best time for sowing, fertilizing and irrigation, in crops such as soybeans, corn, wheat and sunflower."

The first of two Argentine Microwave Observation Satellites (SAOCOM) went into orbit in October 2018; SAOCOM 1B is the eighth Argentine satellite launched since 1996.

"The launch of the Saocom 1B is a milestone because it will be the first time that Argentina has a constellation of earth observation satellites," the head of the SAOCOM project, Josefina Péres, noted.

At: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2020/08/30/SpaceX-launches-satellite-for-Argentina-into-polar-orbit/8001598542392

The head of Argentine Space Commission's SAOCOM project, Josefina Péres.

Sunday's satellite launch, according to Péres, gives Argentina a "constellation of satellites" working together as a single system.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Great news. Hooray for Argentina's new progressive President. n/t

[sandensea]

2. This makes Argentina one of only 10 countries to develop its own satellites (albeit modest ones)

Macri, in one of his Trumpian rants, called the program "spending from the era of the mafia" (referring to the 2003-15 Kirchner years).

And he has relatives in the N'Dragheta! (Calabrese mafia)

All you Calabrese do the Mambo like'a crazy...

[Judi Lynn]

3. Wow! Didn't know he had such "distinguished" relations in Italy! That explains a lot about his dad!

Mauricio Macri's father, Franco. Holy moly.



Franco with his son Mauricio, (recent President of Argentina, hard
right-wing) after Mauricio was returned after being kidnapped.





It also might explain even more about how the Macris and the Trumps were well acquainted in New York....

[sandensea]

4. And even his own father warned he'd be a bad president because he was "anti-industry"

Franco Macri believed that industrialization was the future. But "Mauricio takes after his mother," the elder Macri lamented. "He's all for agriculture."

By which he meant keeping Argentina as a farming backwater where only elite landholding families had a voice.

In this day and age, as you know, that means 70%+ in dire poverty - the way Argentina was up to Perón's reforms in the 1940s (Perón was an authoritarian - but he did have progressive, Bernie-like social and economic policies).

I suspect that's, in part, why Trump and Macri clicked: they both had accomplished (if flawed) fathers, who felt nothing but disappointment for their get-rich-quick sons.

[Judi Lynn]

5. You've shared so much valuable information in your posts, maybe without realizing it!

I used to wonder why the agricultural community seemed to have a real thing about President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and it never seemed appropriate that they were fighting against her so hard, after her husband died. I started believing right-wingers were capitalizing on her being alone, without the advice and support of the former President, to try to beat her down and make her surrender to their demands.

I had no idea who and what these people were! Sounds as if they have been extremely powerful. The landed gentry. Everyone else is a peon! Whoooo.

So much conflict in Argentina, and we were completely unaware. Popular media never seemed interested in anything outside the U.S., and anything unconnected to White Anglo Saxon Protestants in the United States. The population has been raised inside an awareness-proof culture, it seems!

Very interesting starting to realize the parallels in the two Presidential childhoods!