On March 4, 2022, a lonely, spent rocket booster will smack into the surface of the moon at nearly 6,000 mph. Once the dust has settled, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will move into position to get an up-close view of the smoldering crater and hopefully shed some light on the mysterious physics of planetary impacts.

As a planetary scientist who studies the moon, I view this unplanned impact as an exciting opportunity. The moon has been a steadfast witness to solar system history, its heavily cratered surface recording innumerable collisions over the last 4 billion years. However, scientists rarely get a glimpse of the projectiles—usually asteroids or comets—that form these craters. Without knowing the specifics of what created a crater, there is only so much scientists can learn by studying one.

With the upcoming launch of NOAA's new GOES-T satellite, staff at ground stations such as NOAA's Wallops Command and Data Acquisition Station (WCDAS) located at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility are in full swing preparing for the event.

Although Wallops launches smaller rockets as well as research aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, and high-altitude balloons, the facility also supports NOAA's satellite tracking and commanding capabilities.

We spoke with Gregory Johnson, a GOES Ground System Engineer, and Jesse Speidel, Chief of Operations, about just what goes on at Wallops before and after a satellite launch.

First however, they explained that ground stations, like Wallops, are basically radio stations that communicate with satellites from the ground by transmitting and receiving radio waves via large parabolic antennas. Wallops tracks many satellites orbiting Earth this way, as well as deep space satellites that monitor solar activity. The ground stations can send commands to the satellites as well as receive data from them that they then send to be processed.