NOAA's Latest Weather Satellite Is Ready For Launch

If everything goes according to plan, NOAA will launch its newest weather satellite on Tuesday.

The agency plans to launch GOES-T into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, during the late afternoon hours on March 1st. The launch window opens at 4:38 p.m. Eastern Time, according to NOAA's countdown clock.

GOES-T will be the 18th satellite in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) family of weather satellites that began in 1975. GOES-18, as it'll be named once it goes operational later this year, is the third satellite in the fifth generation of GOES spacecraft that began with the launch of GOES-16 in 2016. 

The fifth generation of GOES satellites relays breathtaking views of Earth with a resolution and timeliness that previous generations could only dream of providing. GOES-16, -17, and -18 have such fine resolution that you can see the barber's pole rotation of supercell updrafts churning over the Plains.

These satellites give us a full-disk view of the hemisphere every 15 minutes, an updated image of the continental United States every 5 minutes, and mesoscale images of small-scale areas every 30 to 60 seconds.

GOES-16, also known as GOES-East, has covered the Atlantic Ocean and eastern portions of North America and South America since early 2017.

GOES-17, launched on March 1, 2018, is known as GOES-West, covering the Pacific Ocean and western portion of the two continents. GOES-17 has also been a headache ever since it launched four years ago.

Scientists knew that GOES-17 suffered a major problem not long after launch.

We get our traditional satellite images from a device on the spacecraft known as the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). The ABI detects visible and infrared light radiation emitted from Earth and translates that data into the satellite images we know and love.

The different wavelengths correspond to different products we see—shorter wavelengths provide us the visible images astronauts would see looking out the window, while longer wavelengths are used for products like infrared and water vapor imagery.

An example of interference in infrared satellite imagery caused by excess heat given off by the ABI. | NOAA

The ABI gets quite hot during normal operation, especially at night when the sun is shining directly on the Earth-facing instrument itself. The instrument relies on a cooling system to prevent it from overheating. A clog in one of the cooling pipes hampered the system's ability to cool the ABI properly, causing it to overheat during times of the day and year when the instrument faced hot sunshine.

Not only is overheating bad for the instrument, but the radiation from the heat can actually interfere with and reduce the quality of the data it collects and the images we see. An example of the interference is shown above.

Scientists spent months devising a workaround for this cooling issue. They managed to bring the spacecraft up to near-normal capacity, but there are still certain times of the day and year where the sensor gets quite toasty and image quality is degraded.

On top of those issues, the satellite has faced a couple of glitches and hiccups over the last few years, each of which caused the ABI to unexpectedly shut down for a short period of time.

GOES-17 has had a rough go of it, to say the least. Luckily, GOES-18 is on the way to give it a much-needed rest. NOAA will position the device to take over as the new GOES-West satellite, moving GOES-17 to a parking orbit as a backup in case it needs to stand in for one of the two operational satellites.

We should start seeing our first experimental, non-operational images from GOES-18 in a couple of months.

[Satellite Image: NOAA]

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GOES-17 Is Back Online After Engineers Resolve A Computer Error

Some good news on the satellite front: GOES-17 is going to be just fine.

The weather satellite, which covers the Pacific Ocean and the western half of the Americas, came back online a little before 9:00 a.m. Eastern today after a 31-hour outage caused by an onboard computer error. 

From NOAA's NESDIS:

NOAA’s GOES-17 is out of safe-hold mode and engineers expect its six instruments to return to normal operations soon. The probable cause of yesterday’s anomaly appears to be a memory bit error in the spacecraft computer. The engineering team says the computer has been responding correctly to commands. 

Earlier this morning, the Advanced Baseline Imager and Magnetometer were restored and data are flowing. The remaining four instruments are expected to come online later this morning.  The team expects some minor, short-term data quality issues while the instruments are being recalibrated, but GOES-17 is on track for a full recovery with no lasting effects to the satellite.

Whew.

Just about all of the products you'd ever need are up and running again.

The above image of actinoform clouds over the Pacific Ocean is from just a little while ago. (The clouds are mesmerizing to watch on a loop if you've never had the pleasure.)

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GOES-17, A Fighter Among Weather Satellites, Faces Yet Another Health Hiccup

The weather satellite that monitors the Pacific Ocean and western North America went into safety mode and stopped transmitting data early Thursday morning. There's no public word on what's troubling GOES-17, which is also called GOES-West, aside from a statement that engineers are "aggressively troubleshooting" the issue and working toward a fix.

The satellite is the 17th member of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program, and it serves alongside its twin GOES-16, which monitors the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern side of the Americas as GOES-East.

GOES-West and GOES-East work in tandem to provide breathtaking images that are a tremendous boon to meteorologists monitoring the skies above and what lies beyond the horizon.

We can get high-resolution images of a small area every 30 seconds, national images every 5 minutes, and full-hemisphere images every 10 minutes. The resolution and turnaround time are a vast improvement over past GOES generations.

GOES-West's view of North America on July 21, 2021. (NOAA)

GOES-17 is the little satellite that could. The spacecraft launched in March 2018 with a major flaw that threatened its existence before it even had a chance to shine.

We get our satellite imagery from a device called the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). This sensor uses visible and infrared radiation to create the vibrant images we see online and on television every day.

A geostationary satellite orbits at the exact same speed at which Earth rotates, giving the satellite the same view of Earth for its entire service life.

This fixed orbit exposes the ABI to hot sunshine when it's nighttime here in North America. While it's very cold in space, a hard-working mechanical device basking in direct sunshine gets dangerously hot and it needs a robust cooling system in order to function properly.

After reaching orbit, engineers discovered that one of the cooling pipes that served the ABI was clogged, preventing the sensor from cooling off effectively during times of peak heating.

An example of the interference in infrared satellite imagery caused by excess heat given off by the ABI. (NOAA)

This flaw causes the sensor to grow so hot that it gives off radiation that matches the wavelengths of some infrared and water vapor products, significantly degrading many of the products generated by the ABI during moments of peak warmth.

Engineers had to develop some significant workarounds to get the satellite working in the face of this unfixable flaw. There are still certain times of the day and year where the satellite's performance is degraded.

This isn't the first time GOES-17 unexpectedly shut down. A software glitch in August 2019 knocked the ABI offline for about 11 hours. Engineers solved the problem with the old "turn it off and on again" trick.

NOAA announced last month that they plan to launch GOES-18 in December and designate the new satellite as GOES-West in early 2022, sending GOES-17 into a well-earned retirement.

Fortunately, the previous generation of satellites stands by in case any of the operational satellites feel under the weather.

If GOES-17 requires prolonged downtime between now and the launch of the next satellite, the satellite that previously served as GOES-West (GOES-15) can be swapped in as an emergency substitute.

While the image resolution and speed at which we get new images would fall a bit from what we've grown used to, the substitution would still fill the gap and help meteorologists perform their jobs effectively.

[Top Image: The last satellite image transmitted by GOES-17 before it went down last night, via NOAA]

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This Is Your World Today | December 31, 2020

Today is the 366th day of the longest year we've been through in a long time. Fires, floods, tornadoes, excessive heat, bitter cold, massive snows, and hurricanes upon hurricanes upon hurricanes—and that's just the weather. It's hard to find beauty amid the chaos, but it's there if you know where to look.

If you're a longtime reader (hi!), you might remember that I used to write "Here's Your World Today" posts in a previous blogging life. I originally started those posts as filler to get through quiet days, but it turned into an enjoyable (but short-lived) series to gawk at happenings around the world. In that spirit, and 'cause goodness knows we could use it, here's a loosely affiliated sequel: This Is Your World Today.

A: Today's big weathermaker in the United States is this blobular (totally a word) winter storm in the southeast. It's producing severe thunderstorms along the northern Gulf Coast, complete with an enhanced risk for tornadoes across parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. The cold side of the storm will bring snow and ice to communities from Texas north through the Midwest. Temperatures will briefly jump into the 60s along the East Coast before the system's cold front sends things back down to a more reasonable level for the beginning of January.

B: It's tough to see the Great Lakes through the clouds—but they're part of the reason there are clouds there in the first place. It's been such a (relatively) warm couple of months in the eastern United States that there's hardly any ice on the Great Lakes. The latest analysis from NOAA showed that just 2.2 percent of the Great Lakes were covered by ice. Ice cover percentages are usually in the double digits by this point in the winter.

C: A strong cold front moving over relatively warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean is a recipe for brilliant streets of cumulus clouds. These are always a sight on satellite imagery. They form as air warms up near the surface of the ocean, forming cumulus clouds as its rises and gets organized into rows (or "streets") by the prevailing winds. 

D: The Amazon's hot and humid climate affords us the opportunity to admire thousand-mile fields of cumulus clouds. Particularly active days will see raucous thunderstorms blow up over the Amazon, raging and randomly scooting around until the instability of the day wanes after sunset. 

E: Actinoform clouds (a close-up is seen at the top of this post) are a near-daily occurrence in the southern Pacific Ocean. These marine clouds take on a radial pattern, kind of developing littles spokes and trippy chains as they form over frigid waters. These clouds weren't discovered until weather satellites first spotted them—it's hard to see their shape from below—and it's still a bit of an open question why these clouds take on their distinctive shape. Some of the clouds over the northern Atlantic in "C" above are also actinoform clouds.

F: It's the sun! Well, the sun's reflection. Each day for about the next six months, the sun's reflection on the ocean surface will tick a little higher in latitude. Maximum sunlight reached its southernmost extent over the Tropic of Capricorn on last week's winter solstice. It's always cool to watch the sun's reflection glisten across the oceans in long satellite loops. (The loops are too sizeable to upload here, unfortunately.)

G: This swirling low-pressure system in the Bering Sea is the strongest storm in that part of the world in years. The system's central pressure dropped to a staggering 921 mb on Thursday, which is about as low as you'd expect in a powerful category four or category five hurricane. I explained on Forbes yesterday how this storm got so strong—and why it's so different from a hurricane.

H: Hey, look, Hawaii! Very pretty. It's always interesting to look at the islands on satellite imagery because it's obvious which way the winds are blowing. Moist winds blowing out of the northeast dry out as they pass over the islands, leaving clear skies downwind.

[All satellite images from NOAA.]

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GOES-17, The Little Weather Satellite That Could, Survived Another Hiccup Last Night

The United States' newest weather satellite survives to sense another day. GOES-17, known in service as GOES-West, suffered a 10.5-hour outage this morning after a reported software glitch caused the satellite to stop transmitting products and imagery. Engineers were able to fix the problem and the satellite began scanning the skies again this afternoon.

Meteorologists and amateur weather enthusiasts collectively held their breath this morning when NOAA said engineers were looking into a "spacecraft anomaly" that caused an outage of all visible and infrared imagery from the satellite.

The term "spacecraft anomaly" can be one of those coy euphemisms used to describe a particularly bad incident in a way that doesn't sound so upsetting. It's not unlike a chipper flight attendant casually describing what to do in a "water landing," which sounds much more agreeable than "crashing into a lake."

However, and thankfully!, things aren't always as bad as they first seem when an "anomaly" is first spotted. This issue was reportedly a software glitch that engineers solved with a restart of the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), the instrument that provides us with visible, infrared, and water vapor imagery.

The satellite is back online and working fine now. The image at the top of this post is a view from the satellite this afternoon. (Ohh. Ahh. Pretty.)

GOES-17 Is No Stranger To Struggle

This isn't the first time the newest GOES satellite acted up. The satellite's ABI encountered a significant failure of its cooling system when engineers booted up the satellite for testing in the spring of 2018. NOAA concluded just two weeks ago that a clogged pipe prevented the ABI's coolant system from working properly.

An example of interference in infrared satellite imagery caused by excess heat given off by the ABI. | NOAA

The problem seemed pretty bad at first—so bad, in fact, that it looked like the satellite would have limited functionality that could hamper its effectiveness.

A geostationary satellite like GOES-17 orbits at the same speed Earth rotates, fixing the satellite over one point on the equator. This fixed position affords the satellite the exact same view of Earth for its entire service life. The altitude required to achieve geostationary orbit also exposes the ABI instrument, which faces Earth, to direct sunshine for several hours a day around the winter and spring equinoxes.

The above picture shows why that's a problem when the cooling system doesn't work properly. The ABI works by sensing 16 different spectral wavelengths (known as "bands") to provide us with the visible, water vapor, and infrared imagery we see in weather reports every day. When the ABI's cooling system fails and it overheats, the heat of the instrument itself begins giving off longwave radiation that matches the wavelengths used to create water vapor and infrared imagery. 

The interference from the overheating instrument leads to noisy, useless satellite imagery across the affected wavelengths for those couple of hours of direct sunshine. Engineers were able to implement fixes and workarounds that brought the satellite up to 97 percent functionality, which is pretty darn good given the bleak outlook just a few months earlier.

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The United States' New Weather Satellite Isn't Quite as Broken as We Thought

Are you ready for some preliminary, non-operational good news? Sure you are! It's about time we had something positive. GOES-17, the shiny new satellite the United States launched into orbit a couple of months ago, isn't quite as broken as we thought it was when they fired it up earlier this year. Not only has the latest weather satellite's future been upgraded from "oh no, please no" to "working (for the most part)," but today we're starting to get our first public images from the satellite.

GOES, short for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, is the United States' advanced network of weather satellites that keep a constant eye on storms across the Western Hemisphere. The family of satellites has seen numerous series since the first launch in 1975. GOES-17 is the second satellite in the fifth GOES series; the first, GOES-16, went into operation as GOES-East in late 2017. GOES-17 is slated to become GOES-West, covering the western half of the Western Hemisphere, when it's put into operational use later this year.

GOES-17 launched from Cape Canaveral back on March 1 and quickly wiggled its way into a testing orbit in the following weeks. Once scientists started firing up the satellite's instruments, they found that the cooling system for the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) isn't working at full capacity.

The ABI is the instrument that gives us all of our visible, infrared, and water vapor imagery. The ABI analyzes radiation from the Earth at 16 different wavelengths (known as "bands") to give us everything from visible imagery—showing us clouds as if we took a picture with a camera—to water vapor imagery that shows the location of moist and dry air at different levels of the atmosphere.

Visible imagery utilizes the shortest wavelengths, while infrared imagery—the colorful images that tell us the temperature of the cloudtops and allow us to see clouds at night—operates at the longest wavelengths.

An example of degraded infrared imagery from the GOES-17 satellite, August 14, 2018. | Source: NOAA/NASA

When the ABI runs hotter than it's designed to handle, the instrument starts giving off enough heat that the additional radiation effectively drowns out some of the infrared products that run on longer wavelengths. The above image from NOAA shows what the interference will look like when excess heat starts interfering with certain water vapor and infrared products. The image is unusable for anything but wall art.

Not all hope is lost, though. Scientists working on the satellite have determined that they can change up the position the satellite so that the longer-wavelength products will only be unusable for just a few hours a day during certain parts of the year.

Source: NOAA/NASA

All 16 channels should be available around the clock near the solstices, while the usability of longer-wave products like water vapor and most infrared imagery will be unavailable for a couple of hours at night around the vernal and autumnal equinox.

Why the equinoxes? GOES-17 follows a geostationary orbit above the equator; by matching its orbital speed to the rotation of the Earth, the satellite always stays over the same spot and always has the same view of the planet. This orbit exposes the satellite to the most intense solar radiation when the sun's energy is focused on the equator around the vernal and autumnal equinox, and the least-direct radiation when the energy is focused on the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn on the solstices.

The greatest heating will occur at night because of the satellite's distance from the Earth. The front-facing ABI will experience direct sunlight while it's nighttime in the Americas, while the instrument will be shielded from direct light when the satellite has its back to the sun during the Americas' daytime.

GOES-17 red band visible imagery, 5:00 PM EDT August 28, 2018. Source: RAMMB/CIRA

While it's great that we'll have full use of the new satellite between 75% and 85% of the time, that's still going to amount to tens of thousands of hours of product downtime for meteorologists trying to track storms and features in great detail. NOAA says that they're going to fill in the coverage gaps by using GOES-17 alongside the less-advanced (but fully-functioning) GOES-15, which currently serves as GOES-West.

All images and products from GOES-17 are considered preliminary and non-operational until NOAA says otherwise. (I have to put this in here or I might get an angry email from someone with a dot-gov email address.)

That being said, you can get some of those preliminary and non-operational images from the awesome SLIDER tool by RAMMB/CIRA, the source for the image at the top of this post. The full suite of products aren't available yet, but the data we do have is pretty nice (and such a relief) to see.

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NOAA's Newest Weather Satellite Isn't Working Properly

One of GOES-17's most important instruments can't cool off properly. NOAA broke the bad news today concerning the new weather satellite the United States launched into orbit back on March 1 of this year. The news comes not long after the first test products from the new satellite were released, sending back information about space weather and showing vivid lightning in thunderstorms across the United States earlier this month.

The press release on the agency's blog is enough to put a lump in the throat of weather enthusiasts:

The GOES-R Program is currently addressing a performance issue with the cooling system encountered during commissioning of the GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument.  The cooling system is an integral part of the ABI and did not start up properly during the on-orbit checkout.

A team of experts from NOAA, NASA, the ABI contractor team and industry are investigating the issue and pursuing multiple courses of possible corrective actions. The issue affects the infrared and near-infrared channels on the instrument. The visible channels of the ABI are not impacted.

NOAA’s operational geostationary constellation -- GOES-16, operating as GOES-East, GOES-15, operating as GOES-West and GOES-14, operating as the on-orbit spare -- is healthy and monitoring weather across the nation each day, so there is no immediate impact from this performance issue.

If efforts to restore the cooling system are unsuccessful, alternative concepts and modes will be considered to maximize the operational utility of the ABI for NOAA's National Weather Service and other customers.  An update will be provided as new information becomes available.

The GOES-R family of satellites contains a number of cool scientific instruments to help folks back on Earth monitor different aspects of our planet and the Sun. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is the instrument that gives us the visible, infrared, and water vapor satellite images we see on a daily basis.

Mechanical issues in space are...not good!, to say the least. There's no fixing it if something mechanical breaks on a satellite. Engineers only have technical and software tricks and workarounds to try to resolve issues like this. 

Satellites get hot and they need cooling systems in order to operate. If technicians can't get the ABI's cooling system to work properly, NOAA says they'll have to work with what they've got. Visible imagery is great, but meteorologists need all 16 bands made available by the ABI to fully analyze the atmosphere.

GOES-17 is scheduled to be the western counterpart to GOES-16, the satellite launched in November 2016 and put into regular service this past December to keep a watchful eye over the Atlantic Ocean and eastern North and South Americas. The satellite was scheduled to go into operational service later this year, but it's unclear when or even if  that will happen given these latest developments.

The additional wavelengths and dramatically improved spatial and temporal resolution of the new GOES family of satellites puts the old satellites to shame. Meteorologists can now watch thunderstorms, hurricanes, and even wildfires with sharp imagery that updates almost in real-time. Hopefully they're able to troubleshoot the cooling system on the new satellite so we can have this kind of coverage across the entire western hemisphere.

[Image: Scientists install the ABI on GOES-17 at Lockheed Martin's Gateway Center near Denver, Colorado, via NOAA/NASA]

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The West Coast's Most Advanced Weather Satellite Is Set to Launch This Week

March will come in with the roar of rocket engines for weather geeks and space buffs around the world when the United States launches its newest weather satellite into orbit. GOES-S will lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, just after 5:00 PM Eastern on Thursday, March 1, 2018, barring any technical or environmental delays like thunderstorms or annoying boaters. The enhanced resolution, faster updates, and virtual playground of useful products created by the new satellite will boost our efforts in weather forecasting and environmental monitoring.

NOAA's network of operational weather satellites covering the Western Hemisphere are part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series. The GOES-S satellite launching on Thursday will be the seventeenth working satellite in the series that began in 1975 with a satellite that provided scientists one image every 20 minutes.

The first in the current family of GOES satellites, GOES-16, launched into orbit in November 2016 and became fully operational as GOES-East in December 2017. GOES-S will be renamed GOES-17 once it reaches orbit and it will be designated GOES-West following a successful testing period later this year.

The new satellite will provide us with views of western North and South Americas and much of the eastern half of the Pacific Ocean. GOES-West and its twin GOES-East will have a combined view that stretches from tropical waves chugging off the African coast to enormous low-pressure systems swirling off of New Zealand, and a prime view of every cloud that forms between the southern tip of Chile to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness.

The products created by the new generation of weather satellites are a breathtaking display of advanced technology and engineering. The improved resolution is often compared to trading in your old television for a 55" behemoth that has more pixels than you can count. You can watch individual ripples flow through the tops of thunderstorms on the Plains. The resolution is so fine that you can pinpoint individual cumulus clouds hanging over your house.

One of the most impressive updates is the speed at which we get new images. The previous GOES family provided us updated images of the United States every 15 minutes and a full-disk image of the Western Hemisphere every three hours. The new satellites reduce that speed to a five-minute view of the U.S. and a snapshot of the entire hemisphere every 15 minutes. The satellite can scan mesoscale sectors—zoomed-in views of areas like storms or wildfires—every 30 to 60 seconds.

The enhanced speed and resolution makes such a difference that long animated loops of last year's hurricanes look like they were shot in slow motion. The above animation from NOAA Satellites shows a side-by-side comparison of Hurricane Irma's eye as seen by GOES-16 (left) and the ten-year-old GOES-13 (right).

Improved resolution and speed are only the beginning. The new family of satellites give meteorologists 16 bands (different wavelengths) through which to view the atmosphere, allowing them to differentiate high-level clouds from low-level clouds, spot snow on the ground with ease, keep track of contrails and fog, and even look for hotspots indicative of wildfires.

One of the coolest features is the Global Lightning Mapper, a sensor that tracks and maps lightning flashes in real time. This helps meteorologists track thunderstorms in areas without radar and even lets them monitor intensification in the eyewall of tropical cyclones. The satellite can monitor solar activity and warn scientists of dangerous solar flares that could damage equipment and put astronauts' health at risk.

GOES-17 will replace GOES-15 as the western sector's operational satellite. GOES-15 was launched in 2010 and will be retired to a storage orbit once GOES-17 is operational.

You can see real-time images from GOES-16 over at the College of DuPage's analysis site and RAMMB/CIRA's excellent satellite viewer.

[Images: NASA/Flickr | NOAA/CIRA/RAMMB]

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Tropical Depression Attempts to Bribe Santa, Probably Not Successful

It's satellite images like this that spawn conspiracy theories about our ability to control the weather.