The second attempt, 5 February 2009, was scrubbed after the failure of a payload fairing air conditioning compressor, which is also part of the ground support equipment at the launch pad.

The satellite was successfully launched at 10:22 UTC on 6 February 2009 [13] aboard a Delta II flying in the 7320-10C configuration from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).

Like its predecessors, NOAA-N Prime provides global images of clouds and surface features and vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and humidity for use in numerical weather and ocean forecast models, as well as data on ozone distribution in the upper part of the atmosphere, and near-Earth space environments — information important for the marine, aviation, power generation, agriculture, and other communities.

The SBUV, built by Ball Aerospace, is a long-term monitoring device that takes global measurements and observes how elements in the atmosphere change over time.

[21] The Advanced Data Collection System (ADCS), provided by CNES in France, measures environmental factors such as atmospheric temperature and pressure and the velocity and direction of ocean and wind currents.

The Search and Rescue Repeater (SARR), built by the Department of National Defense in Canada, and the Search and Rescue Processor (SARP), built by Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), detect distress calls sent from emergency beacons on-board aircraft and boats and carried by people in remote areas.

The instruments on the spacecraft transmit the data to ground receiving stations or local user terminals where the location of the emergency signals is determined by Doppler processing.

[15] On 6 September 2003 at 15:28 UTC, the satellite was badly damaged while being worked on at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems factory in Sunnyvale, California.

While the turn-over cart used during the procedure was in storage, a technician removed twenty-four bolts securing an adapter plate to it without documenting the action.

Lockheed Martin agreed to forfeit all profit from the project to help pay for repair costs; they later took a US$30 million charge relating to the incident.