NOAA’s GOES-R satellite launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida this weekend at 6;42pm on November 19, 2016.
Click here to read more about the launch of GOES-R.
But what’s next for the nation’s most advanced weather satellite to-date?
The GOES-R team has confirmed satellite communication and power. Over the next several days, team members will perform a series of maneuvers to bring the satellite into geostationary orbit. This is expected to occur approximately 16 days after launch.
Once GOES-R — now GOES-16 — is placed in geostationary orbit, it will undergo an extended checkout and validation phase lasting approximately one year. The satellite will transition to operations immediately afterward. Whether it will serve as GOES East or GOES West has yet to be determined. The final decision will be based on the health and performance of the NOAA GOES constellation.
GOES-R’s New Imager is Faster and Clearer than Ever
GOES-R is NOAA’s most advanced geostationary weather satellite to-date. But how different can it really be?
Imagine going from a black and white TV to high definition overnight. GOES-R is faster and clearer than current GOES satellites, providing forecasters with more detail and more information than ever before.
Using a powerful new instrument, called the Advanced Baseline Imager, or ABI, GOES-R will provide data and imagery about weather over the entire Western Hemisphere in real-time– it can even do it as frequently as every 30 seconds! This enables NOAA to gather data using three times more channels, four times the resolution, at five times faster than before. This faster, more accurate data means better observations of developing storms. The ABI will be used for a wide range of applications related to weather, oceans, land, climate and hazards.
This video from Japan’s Himawari-8 satellite, which uses a nearly identical imager to the one that will be aboard GOES-R, shows the incredible detail and clarity that will be available from NOAA’s new satellite. Located over the Asia-Pacific region, Himawari-8 provides geostationary Earth observations over the Eastern Hemisphere. This data, along with other geostationary satellites around the globe, help provide a more complete understanding of Earth from 22,000 miles away.
GOES-R’s Revolutionary Lightning Mapper
Did you know that NOAA’s GOES-R satellite will carry the first operational lightning mapper ever flown in space?
Based on years of research, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, or GLM, is a revolutionary new instrument that will measure total lightning (in-cloud, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground) activity continuously over the Americas and adjacent ocean regions with near-uniform spatial resolution.
Severe weather often exhibits a significant increase in lightning activity many minutes before radar can detect a potential storm. This data visualization shows actual lightning measurements captured by an array of ground-based lightning detectors capable of tracing how lightning propagates through the atmosphere. It simulates how the GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper will monitor atmospheric flashes in and around potentially severe weather. This technology could provide critical minutes of valuable warning time in advance of approaching severe storms.
GOES-R: Monitoring Space Weather
GOES-R will be a game changer for forecasting across the United States, but did you know Earth’s weather is not the only weather the satellite will monitor?
In today’s digital world, space weather is no joke. Geomagnetic storms, caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun, can interfere with communications and navigation systems on Earth, threaten power utilities, damage satellites, and cause risk to astronauts. GOES-R has a suite of instruments that play a critical role in monitoring space weather.
Check out this video to learn more about how GOES-R’s instruments will support NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Too bad NASA doesn’t have a satellite to measure the earth’s temperature. Instead they have to rely on the thermometer data from airports and ships from all sorts of countries, no matter how inept or corrupt, and then try and fill in the missing data in sparsely populated areas.
You would think that a satellite would be ideal to measure the earth’s temperature. It could cover the whole planet and would be immune to the “human factor” that all too often can corrupt data. How does anyone know for sure that the 100 years of temperature data from Fumbuckistan weren’t simply the odds sheets from the local goat races? Where is the quality control?
I was at the launch. We had just debarked from the Turner Classic Movies cruise. Had a hotel booked for the day and arrived too early to check in. Hotel clerk asked if we were doing anything that day and I responded that I’d like to complete my long desired pilgrimage to Kennedy. She said, “Good idea, there’s a launch tonight.”
My heart skipped a beat. So I was at KSC and watched this one go up. I can now die a happy man.
So long do people think it will be before the first ‘adjustments’ are needed ?
If Goes R is a geostationary satellite, then how does the “SUVI” telescope and x-ray spectrometer to detect solar flares/storms 24-7? I refer to Thomas Berger’s video above.
see also: http://www.goes-r.gov/spacesegment/suvi.html
definitely makes one wonder if actual data will be available or only massaged and coerced data?
Cheers!
Joe
Goes-R the Traveler, Goes-R the Destructor, Volgiuus Zildrohar and Lord of the Seboullia, Hopefully this time it won’t turn into a giant Sloar. Pity the poor Shubs and Zuuls if it does.
I understand that NOAA and NASA are prone to ignore satellite data that they don’t like. I hope this time it will be different.
Both the NOAA Director and the GOES-R Program Director were at KSC and gave presentations about the mission. Very interesting talks and neither of them said anything about climate change.
There was a great static display of mock-ups of the instrument packages on the satellite and the guys and gals that designed them were on hand to explain them and how they were such a significant improvement on previous instruments.
The launch window was from 5:42 to 6:42, there was a “glitch” but they got it worked out and launched at the very end of their available window. Our cab driver back to the hotel said we were really lucky. Most launches go off at or near their planned time or not at all. He said launching at the very end of the window is rare. Tons of people have planned trips to KSC to watch a launch only to have it scrubbed, then scrubbed again – and they never get to see it. I feel privileged and happy to have stumbled into the opportunity.
Couple of things – visiting KSC is EXPENSIVE! Even if you keep it bare bones, it’s not a cheap trip. I hadn’t expected that.
Also, there’s an IMAX theater. Shows a 3D IMAX movie of the ISS and the views are spectacular. Narrated by Jennifer Laurence, it wastes about 15 minutes of a 40 minute show on the horrors of climate change – with all the usual inaccuracies and glossing over of inconvenient facts.
OMG! Greeland is MELTING!!! Uh, maybe – but we won’t have to worry about the results for a few thousand years. I agree that the burning of the Brazilian rain forest is tragic, but that’s what poor people do when they have to survive. Likewise, the view of pollution pouring out of the Ganges into the Indian Ocean is tragic. But, again, that’s what poor people do. They did show the stark dividing line at night between North and South Korea – but neglected to point out just why that was. The constant references to “fossil fuels” and “carbon pollution” were enough to make me gag. If you can turn off your BS detector long enough to sit through it, it’s probably worth it. The views from space are stunning.
I think the PR on the increase in accuracy and time for warnings is a bit overblown, but they have to justify the expense. The older ones needed replacing but at that distance it will be difficult to increase warning time significantly on severe storms
The delay time for a signal from geo-stationary orbit is only a few tenths of a second. Do you believe that will make much of difference one way or the other?
The time they were refering to was getting updates every minute or two instead of just once every 15 minutes or so.
Why do we not hear more about OCO-2? It is not producing the “desired” data?
Here’s what Himawari-8 does for the eastern hemisphere:
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/himawari-8.asp
(see also “Loop of the Day” link, lower left)
Instant gratification is an important part of the package. I hope it’s part of the GOES-R package too.
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/imgs_c/6/visible/0/201611212230-00.png
(Eastern hemisphere – 5 minutes ago.)
Images from EPIC/DSCVR, or “Gore sat” take about two days to appear online.
I retired this year from the company that made both GLM, and SUVI. Before GLM, my wife, also an engineer, designed the imager for Optical Transit Detector (OTD) which flew on a pegasus, which showed the possibility of detecting lightening from space. It was followed up by Lightening Imaging Sensor (LIS) also designed by my wife, which flew on the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), with TRMM data Dr. Hugh Christian (the Principal Investigator) discovered a pattern in the lightening flashes that fifteen minutes later a tornado touched down. Every time it has been observed. I worked on the prototype for GLM, then moved on to another project. The data from the GOES satellite is down-linked continuously into the ground segment where it’s calibrated, and parsed into the various data products, and shipped to the users.
GLM won’t make a big difference if you live near a big town with RADAR, and other early warning systems, but to the farmer in middle of nowhere Nebraska, that fifteen minutes of warning will let him get into his shelter and save his life.
Just one simple question: Does either the spacecraft raw data processing software or the ground station final data processing and reporting software incorporate a Karl-ization algorithm?
Well, I think it’s pretty ‘cool’.
Another Earth Imaging Satellite just went up as well;
https://www.harris.com/events/worldview-4-launch
The “instruments” inside both were made by Harris Corp.
All those Google Earth images you see on the net where produced by Earth Imaging Satellites made by Harris (and it’s predecessors including Eastman Kodak, a company that knows a thing or three about imaging).
GOES-R is pretty high tech stuff. Here’s hoping it makes guesstimating the weather a bit easier.
Cheers, KevinK
I often see on here references to “lightening” when it’s obvious that what is meant is “lightning”. As far as I know, ‘lightening’ is not an Americanisation of ‘lightning’. This misspelling is even used by people one would think would know better.
Am I just being too pedantic?
State of the art satellite with high resolution and fast cameras to watch weather in real time is not a tool for weather prediction, it is weather watching. This is quite explicit in how NASA views weather prediction. Namely, it is just junk. So get out the fast, multi-spectral cameras to watch the weather in real time and extrapolate more of that will occur in the new hour. Whoa, big scientific advance. Which also means there is no real prediction possible and none envisioned. However we are told they know where this is all leading to for the next 1000 years.
As usual with the US government, what are the calibrations for the sensors? Who checks, publicly, the calibrations of the sensors? Those that have the keys for the calibrations, govern the results of the sensors.
TomB, November 21, 2016 at 1:50 pm
“I was at the launch.”
Living close to Cape Canaveral one tends to ignore rocket launches but this one took place one hour after sunset. My family loves night launches so we sat on the patio sipping our adult beverages even though it was a little chilly (15 Centigrade) until the rocket disappeared into the cloudless eastern sky.
Please note that I am the real “Gallopingcamel”. The earlier posts on this thread are by an impostor, although a very smart one. I must say it is flattering to be hacked!