New Satellite to Improve Western Hemisphere Weather Tracking
GOES-S is the second satellite in a series of next-generation weather satellites. It will allow NOAA to track in near-real time storm systems, lightning, wildfires, and coastal fog and other hazards that affect the western United States.
NASA successfully launched an advanced NOAA weather satellite on March 1, with NASA confirming almost four hours later that solar arrays on GOES-S, the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, had successfully deployed and GOES-S was operating on its own power.
GOES-S is the second satellite in a series of next-generation weather satellites, and it will allow the agency to track in near-real time storm systems, lightning, wildfires, and coastal fog and other hazards that affect the western United States.
"We at NASA Science are proud to support our joint agency partner NOAA on today's launch of GOES-S, a national asset that will impact lives across the Western Hemisphere each and every day," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, who attended the Florida launch.
After GOES-S is positioned in a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, about two weeks after the launch, it will be renamed GOES-17. "Later this year, after undergoing a full checkout and validation of its six high-tech instruments, the new satellite will move to the GOES-West position and become operational," NASA reported. "From there, it constantly will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements, real-time mapping of lightning activity, and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather."
It will work in tandem with GOES-16, which is at the GOES-East position.
NOAA manages the GOES-R Series program through an integrated NOAA/NASA office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA also oversees the acquisition of the spacecraft, instruments, and launch vehicles.