Press. voanews.com.
The most
advanced weather satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday night, part
of an $11 billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and save lives. This new
GOES-R spacecraft will track U.S. weather as never before: hurricanes,
tornadoes, flooding, volcanic ash clouds, wildfires, lightning storms, even
solar flares. Indeed, about 50 TV meteorologists from around the country
converged on the launch site — including NBC’s Al Roker — along with 8,000
space program workers and guests.
“What’s so exciting is that we’re going to be
getting more data, more often, much more detailed, higher resolution,” Roker
said. In the case of tornadoes, “if we can give people another 10, 15, 20
minutes, we’re talking about lives being saved.”
“Really a
quantum leap above any satellite NOAA has ever flown,” said Stephen Volz, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s director of satellites. “For
the American public, that will mean faster, more accurate weather forecasts and
warnings,” Volz said earlier in the week.
First of
four satellites
Airline
passengers also stand to benefit, as do rocket launch teams. Improved
forecasting will help pilots avoid bad weather and help rocket scientists know
when to call off a launch. The first in a series of four high-tech satellites,
GOES-R hitched a ride on an unmanned Atlas V rocket, delayed an hour by rocket
and other problems. NOAA teamed up with
NASA for
the mission.
The
satellite, valued by NOAA at $1 billion, is aiming for a 22,300-mile-high
equatorial orbit. There, it will join three aging spacecraft with 40-year-old
technology, and become known as GOES-16. After months of testing, this newest
satellite will take over for one of the older ones. The second satellite in the
series will follow in 2018. All told, the series should stretch to 2036.
GOES-R’s
premier imager, one of six science instruments, will offer three times as many
channels as the existing system, four times the resolution and five times the
scan speed, said NOAA program director Greg Mandt. A similar imager is also
flying on a Japanese weather satellite.
Typically,
it will churn out full images of the Western Hemisphere every 15 minutes and
the continental United States every five minutes. Specific storm regions will
be updated every 30 seconds. Forecasters will get pictures “like they’ve never
seen before,” Mandt promised. A first-of-its-kind lightning mapper, meanwhile,
will take 500 snapshots a second.
This
next-generation GOES program — $11 billion in all — includes four satellites,
an extensive land system of satellite dishes and other equipment, and new
methods for crunching the massive, nonstop stream of expected data.
Hurricane
Matthew, interestingly enough, delayed the launch by a couple weeks. As the
hurricane bore down on Florida in early October, launch preps were put on hold.
Matthew stayed far enough offshore to cause minimal damage to Cape Canaveral,
despite some early forecasts that suggested a direct strike.