The sky, as Ulysses remarks in Troilus and Cressida, has always been a very tidy place:
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, all in line of order.
Meteorologists have no wish to disturb this convenient celestial arrangement and have always, therefore, numbered their satellites in a neat ascending sequence.
The first Meteosat, for example, was Meteosat 1, and there followed Meteosats 2, 3, and 4 and so on, up to the most recent member of the family, Meteosat 7. Likewise, the Americans with their NOAA series have progressed as far NOAA-14.
But many years ago someone had a most disturbing thought: what would happen if a satellite failed to make it into orbit? If the rocket carrying NOAA-9, for instance, were to explode before it had discharged its payload?
There would be an embarrassing hiatus in the numbering sequence, an untidy gap between the satellites NOAA-8 and NOAA-10, and a total lack of order in the heavens.
To avoid this quite intolerable eventuality, meteorological satellites are often assigned a letter, rather than a number, until they have settled safely into orbit with their weathereye wide open. Thus NOAA-6 was known as NOAA-A until it was switched on in space in 1979; NOAA-I became NOAA-13, and NOAA-J, launched in December 1994, became the satellite we know and love as NOAA-14.
Now, if you have noticed these letters and their corresponding numbers do not quite add up, then you are right. That which had been feared duly happened in the case of NOAA-B; it was to have been NOAA-7 when it was launched in 1980, but it failed to reach its proper orbit and had to be abandoned. NOAA-C was hastily ejected into space a few months later to star, almost literally, in the still vacant role of NOAA-7.
All the other NOAA satellites, however, have taken up their scheduled appointments precisely as was planned, and this has happened again in the case of NOAA-K, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 9 a.m. last Wednesday.
It is now in orbit 516 miles above the Earth, circling the planet in a polar orbit every 102 minutes. From there it will provide a continuous sequence of images of cloud, snow, ice, and vegetation, temperature and atmospheric moisture data, and information on pollution.
And once it has been confirmed that NOAA-K and all its instruments are working properly, it will be renamed NOAA-15 to preserve that highly desirable perfect order in the sky.