Hey friends, Hannah here with some exciting news - I'm going to Kennedy Space Center, and I'm bringing you along for the journey!

I'm going to Florida to cover the launch of the GOES-T weather satellite. You can click the story below to learn more about this particular satellite. Meteorologist Rick DeLuca wrote a great blog to help you better understand what I'm about to see. 

The GOES-T weather satellite contains top-notch technology, a big part of which was built in Indiana. L3Harris in Fort Wayne has been working on the Advanced Baseline Imager since the 90s, they told me in an interview several years ago. When I lived and worked in Fort Wayne, I got to go behind-the-scenes at their facility and see where the ABI was put together and where it will be monitored after this launch. The ABI is basically the camera part of the satellite, so all the top-of-the-line products and images that come from GOES-T are thanks to Indiana scientists! 

The meteorologist you see on TV is more than a pretty face who "gets paid to be wrong half the time" (heavy eye roll). We rely heavily on the data weather satellites send back to alert you to current threats and to predict the weather. Without satellites we wouldn't know the placement or intensity of hurricanes in the oceans until they got much closer to land. Weather satellites have taught us so much about lightning, wild fires, dust storms, severe weather, strong wind, and so many other threatening weather phenomena. This particular satellite will be monitoring weather along the western coast of the United States. You have often heard us say on TV, "we will know more about this storm once it comes onshore" speaking about bigger weather systems heading our way from the Pacific. This satellite is how we watch those systems as they approach our area to give you such an early heads up that something is coming. That's why this piece of equipment matters, and why it's SO COOL that I get to go watch the launch.

Here's how this whole opportunity came about: as a member of "the media" I applied to be credentialed by NASA for a future rocket launch. Two months later they called with the exciting news that I had been approved to attend the launch of the GOES-T weather satellite from Kennedy Space Center in two weeks. I had two weeks to figure out how to get down to Florida, how involved the station wanted to be, and what I would be able to do. Needless to say it was a bit of a scramble to get everything together in time, and now the time is here!

What can you expect to see this week? Everything I see and am allowed to show you. I will be posting almost all of it on social media, so make sure you're following me and WDRB on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find me on those platforms using the links at the top of this page. I will do some LIVE videos on Facebook this week to bring you into the action in the moment. I will be posting here regularly on the WDRB Weather blog about the people I meet, the things I see, and more about this awesome piece of technology.  I will also be sending back pictures and videos for the team here at WDRB to use online and on TV!

If you have any specific questions about this satellite, the launch, or this mission, you can send those to me on social media. I will be working to answer your questions while I'm in Florida.