Best weather satellite ever built rockets into space

Moreover, GOES-R is also capable of constantly monitoring space weather conditions, such as effects of solar flares, which could provide advance notice of potential communication and navigation disruptions.

To learn more about the environmental and weather forecasting capabilities of the GOES programs, check out the NOAA site for a great presentation here.

The new lightning spotter won’t go online immediately.

Once the satellite reaches orbit, it will change names from GOES-R to GOES-16 and become the 16th geostationary weather satellite in United States history, CNN reported.

The new satellite will be capable of taking high-resolution images of the Western Hemisphere four times better than the satellites now in use.

“In terms of increased quality, the images from GOES-R have been described as going from standard definition TV to high definition TV”.

This weekend NASA will launch the Next-Generation Weather Satellite known as GOES-R.

Rounding out the satellite’s complement of instruments are a magnetometer and the Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS).

“From the start of the GOES program, there have been a couple of channels added, but this is a quantum leap from there”, said Greg Mandt, GOES-R system program director at NOAA. We carry the weather in our pockets, for one thing. If you want to get an fantastic glimpse into the space program, and this specific mission, I highly recommend the prelaunch coverage as well.

To say that meteorologists are excited is a bit of an understatement. It can also be used to help strategy in commercial airlines and even in war zones because when big space weather happens, it frequently interrupts radio traffic with pure static, leaving people blind and out of contact. The latter provides the most detailed information, but collecting information from a plane is time consuming and can be hard if the hurricane is far away from land. This high refresh rate will allow forecasters to observe storm structures that evolve too rapidly for legacy sensors to capture, but hold key information related to severe weather onset.

Currently, the average lead time for tornado warnings is 13 minutes, but with the launch of GOES-R, meteorologists believe that could improve with a significantly longer lead time.

All satellite information comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). High energy particles from solar storms can mess up Global Positioning System, utility grids, and other satellites. Solar storms are also responsible for producing spectacular aurora near the Earth’s poles. Forecasters are predicting a 90 percent chance of favorable weather. The most advanced weather satellite ever b.

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