Today, the latest member of a family of storm detection satellites that will head into space, carrying high-resolution cameras that will be used in real time to track everything from storms and floods to wildfires and smoke, and even space weather. The GOES-T satellite is scheduled to explode at 4:38 p.m. ET — weather permitting, of course — aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“It’s a multi-role spacecraft. Basically, any kind of weather, good or bad, any kind of hazardous environmental conditions, the cameras on GOES-T will see them,” said Pamela Sullivan, GOES-R program manager at the Agency. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said to NASA designed and built the new satellite. “GOES satellites really help people every day, before, during and after disasters.”
The new satellite will be part of a pair of eyes tracking North America — one eye looking west and the other looking east. GOES-T will focus on the western continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, and parts of Central America and the Pacific Ocean. Its siblings, which have been orbiting since 2016, include the eastern continent of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
NOAA has maintained this satellite duo (and sometimes, a trio) since the 1970s, retiring orbiters as they age and swapping out new satellites. When it enters orbit, GOES-T will be renamed GOES-18, because it is the 18th satellite in the program, and it will also be called GOES-West, because it is the eye that looks to the West. It will replace satellite is currently covering the west, in 2018 developed an issue with the Enhanced Baseline Camera, one of its most important tools. The loop heatpipe system was malfunctioning and not transferring enough heat from the electronics to the heatsink. As a result, heat has become a contaminant; At certain times, the infrared probes become saturated, reducing their image quality.
However, older satellites are not useless. After GOES-T launches, it will be put in “standby mode” and maintained as a backup device in orbit, Sullivan said. The previous 13 satellites were decommissioned, while the other 2 remained in orbit as a backup. The new satellite is not the last one either. Eventually, another satellite (GOES-U) will follow it, potentially replacing the easterly satellite, ensuring that the dynasty lasts at least the mid-2030s.
GOES-T is an upgrade over its predecessors. This is the third member of the new generation of GOES spacecraft that comes with improved versions of the Advanced Baseline Imager that can take high-resolution images of the entire western hemisphere every five minutes. It captures those images in 16 different spectral bands or “channels” — a red channel and a blue channel at the image wavelengths, and then another 14 images ranging from the infrared wavelengths. close to mid-infrared. (Previous GOES imagers had only five channels.) This allowed the researchers to select their favorite channels to best map out wildfires, clouds, storms, smoke, dust, steam, ozone and many other atmospheric phenomena.
While most satellites fly a few hundred miles above the ground in relatively crowded low-Earth orbit, orbiting the globe every two hours or so, GOES-T will fly up to 22,000 miles – about an hour. tenth of the way to the moon. In this sparsely populated region known as geostationary orbit, spacecraft orbits are as fast as the world’s rotation, allowing them to stay in place on the same spot on the globe. That key feature allows the GOES satellite to continuously monitor weather, which can change rapidly. (GOES stands for Geographically Active Environmental Satellite.)
