At a Glance
- The satellite is the latest in the GOES series.
- It will replace the current GOES East.
- GOES satellites are critical to weather forecasting, including for hurricanes and severe weather.
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There's about to be a powerful new weapon in weather forecasting.
NOAA's latest hurricane-spotting, weather-tracking satellite launched at 5:26 p.m. EDT Tuesday on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
The satellite is the latest iteration in the GOES series, or Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, operated by NOAA. This one will eventually replace the current GOES-East, which keeps a watchful eye on the eastern half of the U.S. and is especially crucial during hurricane season and outbreaks of severe weather.
Two operational GOES satellites are in constant orbit 22,000 miles above us, monitoring weather both on Earth and in space, and there is an additional satellite available in case one of the other two has a malfunction.
"These satellites are looking at basically anything that's happening, whether it's your kind of routine rainstorm to things like volcanic eruptions, fires, smoke from fires, it really sees everything that's going on on the earth," GOES program director Pam Sullivan said at a recent media day at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida, where final touches were put on the satellite.
GOES satellites also keep a careful watch on space weather and the sun.
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Perhaps appropriately, weather was an issue until minutes before launch, when NASA gave the official green light. The U.S. Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron had conditions at 60% go, citing concerns over lightning and clouds, and the original 5:16 p.m. launch window had been pushed back 10 minutes.
Keeping An Eye On Our Backyard
The satellite, called GOES-U until it's officially operational, is the last in a new generation that started launching in 2016. The entire replacement program cost more than $10 billion and spans 30 years from start to finish, according to NASA.
In all, there have been five generations of GOES satellites since the first launched 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 spot on Earth in real time, helping forecasters know when to issue things like tornado warnings or flash flood alerts.
"It is the only device that provides 24-hour, seven days, coverage across the entire Western Hemisphere," Will Ullrich, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Florida, said. "And so we can see everything that's going on in our backyard."
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GOES images are also familiar to anyone who checks the weather.
"If you're watching satellite in the western hemisphere on our app, from your local news, or online, it is very likely that you're seeing data from the GOES East satellite," weather.com digital meteorologist Jonathan Belles said.
GOES satellites also collect long-term data that helps track climate change and other trends.
What's New, And What's Next?
The new series of GOES satellites can scan the Earth five times faster than the current versions, and at four times the resolution, according to NASA. It can capture images of any weather on Earth as frequently as every 30 seconds.
That's going to improve forecasts for everything from everyday weather to hurricanes.
"It's got the lightning mapper, that can actually see when lightning is forming in the eye wall. That can tell forecasters whether the storm might be getting more strong. And then the imager is also tracking wind patterns, so it can tell what might be steering that hurricane. It can tell when it's getting more intense," Sullivan said.
"It can really tell everything about the storm."
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Among the instruments onboard the new satellite is a special camera designed to observe the sun and watch for coronal mass ejections, which 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, which will bring the first operational and near-real-time images of the sun's corona back to Earth," Belles said. "This function will replace a research-only imager that only produces images of solar storms once every 8 hours."
The current GOES East will continue to orbit, acting as a backup in the event something happens to one of the others.
Meanwhile, the next generation of GOES satellites is already in development. The first is currently scheduled to launch in 2032.
What new technology will it bring us?
"The fact is, things that I can't even dream of," Ullrich said.
Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.
