The GOES-R series
satellites are NOAA's current generation of geostationary satellites,
and these are the ones that are positioned over the U.S.
continuously so that they can watch for dangerous
environmental conditions and weather that would affect the U.S.
or anybody in the Western Hemisphere.
So, GOES-U
is the last of the GOES-R series satellites, and it will be the one that
when launched, it'll actually go into the eastern location over the U.S..
From there, it will be watching and taking images as often
as every 30 seconds of dangerous weather that tracks towards the U.S..
Yeah the GOES-U you satellite
has got a new passenger it's called the compact coronagraph.
It's designed specifically to be looking at the Sun
and looking for coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun.
These CMEs are actually
tons of charged particles that the Sun ejects.
And if they come towards the Earth, they can affect things that people care
about, like the electrical grid, like GPS signals and radio signals.
So it's very important to be forecasting for these events.
Well, the GOES-U satellite,
like the others in the GOES-R series, will have very advanced instrumentation.
It's got a main camera that can look at rapidly forming storms
every 30 seconds, and it's got an advanced lightning mapper that's actually
looking at lightning events across the hemisphere 500 times a second.
And so this combination of instruments really gives
forecasters that real time up to the minute
understanding of what's going on with weather so that they can inform you
about a particular hazard start happening in your neighborhood.
Yeah, just search
social media for @NOAAsatellites and you'll find us there.
Well, it's very important to never run out of weather satellites.
So NOAA is already planning the next generation series called GeoXO.
GeoXO is going to have even more advanced cameras.
It's going to have an ocean color instrument to watch coastal conditions.
It's going to have an air quality
measurement instrument to look for pollution across the U.S..
And these instruments, in combination with the same kind of instruments
that GOES-R has, will give a very comprehensive view
of all kinds of weather and dangerous conditions across the U.S..
The GeoXO satellites are actually going to be delivering ten times as much data
as GOES-R does.
So it will do an even better job for the American public.
So the GOES-U
satellite is going to be stationed over the east coast of the U.S.
From there can view the entire U.S..
It's also got a great view from there of the Caribbean and South America.
And importantly, it will see all the way across the Atlantic,
over to Europe and Africa so that it can see storms like hurricanes
that really start off the coast of Africa and track towards the U.S..
Geostationary Earth orbit is one where the satellite speed
is going at exactly the same rotation speed as the Earth.
And that means that the satellite is always looking at the same place on Earth.
And so that's really important when you're looking at things like weather
and you want to keep track of storms as they're moving across the U.S.
or other locations.