After a five-year delay, an Earth-observing satellite will be launched to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change. The $1.5 billion National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission comes in a year of weather extremes in the United States, including tornadoes, wildfires, and hurricane-caused flooding. \"We\'ve already had 10 separate weather events, each inflicting at least $1 billion in damages,\" said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The satellite will launch before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Delta 2 rocket that will lift into an orbit 800 kilometers above the Earth.