- The satellite is the latest in the GOES line.
- It will replace the existing GOES East.
- GOES satellites are critical to forecasting weather, including hurricanes and severe weather.
A powerful new weapon is on the way in weather forecasting.
NOAA’s newest hurricane and weather monitoring satellite launched atop SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center today at 5:26 p.m. ET.
The satellite is the latest iteration in the GOES, or Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, series operated by NOAA. It will eventually replace the current GOES-East, which keeps a close eye on the eastern half of the US and is especially important during hurricane season and severe weather outbreaks.
The two operational GOES satellites are in a constant orbit 22,000 miles above us, monitoring weather both on Earth and in space, with an additional satellite available in case one of the other two malfunctions.
“These satellites watch basically everything that’s going on, whether it’s your kind of routine rain to things like volcanic eruptions, wildfires, smoke from wildfires, they really see everything that’s happening on Earth,” said GOES Program Director Pam Sullivan at the conference. a recent media day at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., where final touches were made to the satellite.
GOES satellites also closely monitor space weather and the sun.
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Perhaps rightly so, the weather was only a problem shortly before the start. The US Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron had conditions at 60% before launch, citing concerns about lightning and clouds.
We keep an eye on our backyard
Hurricane Ian is shown approaching Florida in September 2022 in this GOES East image.
(NOAA)
The satellite, called GOES-U until it is officially launched, is the last of a new generation that began launching in 2016. The entire replacement program cost more than $10 billion and took 30 years from start to finish, according to NASA.
In all, there have been five generations of GOES satellites since the first launch in 1975, Sullivan said. Each gave meteorologists a closer and closer look at Earth.
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Current GOES capabilities include the ability to zoom in on any location on Earth in real time, helping forecasters know when to issue tornado or flash flood warnings, for example.
“It’s the only facility that provides 24-hour, seven-day coverage of the entire Western Hemisphere,” said Will Ullrich, warning coordinating meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Florida. “And so we can see everything that’s going on in our backyard.
Anyone who checks the weather is also familiar with GOES images.
“If you’re watching the Western Hemisphere satellite in our app, from local news or online, it’s very likely you’re seeing data from the GOES East satellite,” said Weather.com Digital Meteorologist Jonathan Belles.
GOES satellites also collect long-term data to help monitor climate change and other trends.
What’s new and what’s next?
GOES-U is on display at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida on June 4, 2024
(Jan Childs/weather.com)
The new line of GOES satellites can scan Earth five times faster than current versions and with four times the resolution, according to NASA. It can capture images of any weather on Earth as often as every 30 seconds.
This will improve forecasts for everything from daily weather to hurricanes.
“It has a lightning mapper that can actually see when lightning forms in the eyewall. That can tell forecasters if the storm might get stronger. And then the sensor also tracks the wind patterns, so it can tell what might be driving that hurricane, it can to find out when it is more intense,” Sullivan said.
“He can really tell everything about a storm.
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Among the instruments aboard the new satellite is a special camera designed to observe the sun and track coronal mass ejections that can disrupt the power grid, GPS radio signals and communications infrastructure.
“The new GOES East will be the first spacecraft to carry an operational coronagraph that will bring the first near-real-time operational images of the solar corona back to Earth,” Belles said. “This feature will replace a research-only imaging device that produces images of solar storms only once every 8 hours.”
The current GOES East will continue in orbit and act as a backup in case something happens to one of the others.
Meanwhile, the next generation of GOES satellites is already being developed. The first is currently scheduled to launch in 2032.
What new technologies will it bring us?
“Things that I can’t even dream of are real,” Ullrich said.
Weather.com reporter John Childs covering the latest news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.