Tuesday SpaceX Launches a NOAA Satellite to Improve Weather Forecasts for Earth and Space (space.com) 20
Tuesday a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a special satellite — a state-of-the-art weather-watcher from America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It will complete a series of four GOES-R satellite launches that began in 2016. Space.com drills down into how these satellites have changed weather forecasts: More than seven years later, with three of the four satellites in the series orbiting the Earth, scientists and researchers say they are pleased with the results and how the advanced technology has been a game changer. "I think it has really lived up to its hype in thunderstorm forecasting. Meteorologists can see the convection evolve in near real-time and this gives them enhanced insight on storm development and severity, making for better warnings," John Cintineo, a researcher from NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory , told Space.com in an email.
"Not only does the GOES-R series provide observations where radar coverage is lacking, but it often provides a robust signal before radar, such as when a storm is strengthening or weakening. I'm sure there have been many other improvements in forecasts and environmental monitoring over the last decade, but this is where I have most clearly seen improvement," Cintineo said. In addition to helping predict severe thunderstorms, each satellite has collected images and data on heavy rain events that could trigger flooding, detected low clouds and fog as it forms, and has made significant improvements to forecasts and services used during hurricane season. "GOES provides our hurricane forecasters with faster, more accurate and detailed data that is critical for estimating a storm's intensity, including cloud top cooling, convective structures, specific features of a hurricane's eye, upper-level wind speeds, and lightning activity," Ken Graham, director of NOAA's National Weather Service told Space.com in an email.
Instruments such as the Advanced Baseline Imager have three times more spectral channels, four times the image quality, and five times the imaging speed as the previous GOES satellites. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper is the first of its kind in orbit on the GOES-R series that allows scientists to view lightning 24/7 and strikes that make contact with the ground and from cloud to cloud. "GOES-U and the GOES-R series of satellites provides scientists and forecasters weather surveillance of the entire western hemisphere, at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales," Cintineo said. "Data from these satellites are helping researchers develop new tools and methods to address problems such as lightning prediction, sea-spray identification (sea-spray is dangerous for mariners), severe weather warnings, and accurate cloud motion estimation. The instruments from GOES-R also help improve forecasts from global and regional numerical weather models, through improved data assimilation."
The final satellite, launching Tuesday, includes a new sensor — the Compact Coronagraph — "that will monitor weather outside of Earth's atmosphere, keeping an eye on what space weather events are happening that could impact our planet," according to the article.
"It will be the first near real time operational coronagraph that we have access to," Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, told Space.com on the phone. "That's a huge leap for us because up until now, we've always depended on a research coronagraph instrument on a spacecraft that was launched quite a long time ago."
It will complete a series of four GOES-R satellite launches that began in 2016. Space.com drills down into how these satellites have changed weather forecasts: More than seven years later, with three of the four satellites in the series orbiting the Earth, scientists and researchers say they are pleased with the results and how the advanced technology has been a game changer. "I think it has really lived up to its hype in thunderstorm forecasting. Meteorologists can see the convection evolve in near real-time and this gives them enhanced insight on storm development and severity, making for better warnings," John Cintineo, a researcher from NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory , told Space.com in an email.
"Not only does the GOES-R series provide observations where radar coverage is lacking, but it often provides a robust signal before radar, such as when a storm is strengthening or weakening. I'm sure there have been many other improvements in forecasts and environmental monitoring over the last decade, but this is where I have most clearly seen improvement," Cintineo said. In addition to helping predict severe thunderstorms, each satellite has collected images and data on heavy rain events that could trigger flooding, detected low clouds and fog as it forms, and has made significant improvements to forecasts and services used during hurricane season. "GOES provides our hurricane forecasters with faster, more accurate and detailed data that is critical for estimating a storm's intensity, including cloud top cooling, convective structures, specific features of a hurricane's eye, upper-level wind speeds, and lightning activity," Ken Graham, director of NOAA's National Weather Service told Space.com in an email.
Instruments such as the Advanced Baseline Imager have three times more spectral channels, four times the image quality, and five times the imaging speed as the previous GOES satellites. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper is the first of its kind in orbit on the GOES-R series that allows scientists to view lightning 24/7 and strikes that make contact with the ground and from cloud to cloud. "GOES-U and the GOES-R series of satellites provides scientists and forecasters weather surveillance of the entire western hemisphere, at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales," Cintineo said. "Data from these satellites are helping researchers develop new tools and methods to address problems such as lightning prediction, sea-spray identification (sea-spray is dangerous for mariners), severe weather warnings, and accurate cloud motion estimation. The instruments from GOES-R also help improve forecasts from global and regional numerical weather models, through improved data assimilation."
The final satellite, launching Tuesday, includes a new sensor — the Compact Coronagraph — "that will monitor weather outside of Earth's atmosphere, keeping an eye on what space weather events are happening that could impact our planet," according to the article.
"It will be the first near real time operational coronagraph that we have access to," Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, told Space.com on the phone. "That's a huge leap for us because up until now, we've always depended on a research coronagraph instrument on a spacecraft that was launched quite a long time ago."
Heavy launches are a fun watch. (Score:2)
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Probably the last of it's kind for US space too now that Delta Heavy is done.
Unless theres a future where SpaceX straps 3 Superheavy boosters together...
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For sure it's rule-of-cool is undeniable. The double landing is still somewhat absolute madness to watch everytime.
Re: Heavy launches are a fun watch. (Score:2)
GOES constellation? (Score:2)
After this launch, what is the next generation GOES going to be? Anyone have info on that .. it must already be in advanced planning right? Is it going to double down on geostationary, or be a constellation in LEO or MEO instead? Of course they'll have to rename it to LOES or something.
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I think it's these for now
Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) [noaa.gov]
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Hm .. not sure geostationary is a good idea anymore given how cheap it is to launch constellations. They would get much better resolution even with cheaper sensors via a constellation since the satellites would be in MEO. Iridium got full Earth coverage with 66 satellites in MEO. One or two Starship launches could handle that.
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correction .. iridium satellites are in LEO .. which is even cheaper to access.
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You're always gonna have geostationary weather satellites though, it just makes too much sense. Seems like there is a multiple small sat project also happening though.
https://spacenews.com/noaa-kic... [spacenews.com]
You said it exactly though, once Starship is a viable platform the use case for more constellations and just, crazy stuff becomes possible. I think anybody working in the field has a "break glass in case of Starship" set of ideas to kick off once it's safe to make a business case for it. Within a couple more
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How can geostationary compete with multiple satellites in MEO or LEO? Even GOES-X which will launch in the 2030s will manage only half a kilometer resolution. Compare that with 3 feet resolution of publicly available LEO satellites (spy satellites can supposedly have sub-inch resolution). I can't think of a scenario where GEO wins .. long exposure at night? Even then I think the proximity of MEO or LEO more than make up for that.
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It just has an unrestricted, steady view of the entire hemisphere, 24/7. This is also space so distances are not as critical and these don't seem sub-meter resolution for what they are doing, the ocean instrument has a resolution of 3m. Sure you can composite that together but then you have to time align and with weather you want to see everything at once for the big picture analysis and GEOlets you do that, you don't want to give up this imagery or go through a ton of hoops just to get back to this: htt [noaa.gov]
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I hope no issues (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope this gets into orbit safely and is fully funded in advanced.
Why, we have an election coming up in a few months. Since people in the US have memories of a gnat, Trump people did all they can to destroy NOAA. If elected I would not be surprised if he succeeds this time.
If people remember, in 2016, a project was started to archive NOAA's climate data.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20012017/climate-change-data-science-denial-donald-trump/
I wonder if people are looking to do the same this year ?
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I hope this gets into orbit safely and is fully funded in advanced.
Why, we have an election coming up in a few months. Since people in the US have memories of a gnat, Trump people did all they can to destroy NOAA. If elected I would not be surprised if he succeeds this time.
If people remember, in 2016, a project was started to archive NOAA's climate data.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20012017/climate-change-data-science-denial-donald-trump/
I wonder if people are looking to do the same this year ?
That article says a bunch of people who suffer from crippling anxiety got anxious about another something they were afraid could happen someday
Re:I hope no issues (Score:4, Informative)
It's a valid fear. Shrub's people ordered the destruction of a large amount of NASA data, including years of unanalyzed data tapes from the Pioneer spacecraft. Direct orders came down from the White House to shred the tapes, with the excuse of the minuscule 'cost savings' from no longer storing them. Not dispose of them, shred them. Despite the order and at risk of their jobs NASA administrators handed them over to the Planetary Society, who found and refurbished a tape drive to read them (in a computer museum, literally) and made the data freely available. That's why we have a solution to the Pioneer Anomaly today.
Barcode Artifact? (Score:2)
If we have any weather bird nerds in here, does anyone know if NOAA ever figured out what was going on with the barcode artifact [satelliteliaisonblog.com] on GOES-18 (GOES-T)?
The last report from 2023 indicated that it had diminished some, but that GOES-18 still has distinct artifacts when looking at cold weather features on shortwave IR (band 7). The only thing they seemed sure of at the time was that it wasn't another cooling failure like on GOES-17. Either way, the net result has been that the ABI camera is not performing as well
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Hard apparently. I've read that it's second only to traffic for difficulty in short term predictions. Too many variables, I think.
Imagery available to all (Score:2)
With a relatively inexpensive software defined radio dongle and antenna, anybody can pick up and decode real time imagery from GOES satellites. Imagery is also archived online, but picking up the feed from a satellite directly overhead is very entertaining. I hope the feeds remain accessible to all.