GOES-18

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  NOAA’s GOES-T satellite being encapsulated inside the Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing on February 7

GOES-18, (designated pre-launch as GOES-T), or GOES-WEST is a Meteorological Satellite both owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated for NASA that observes the weather above West Coast of the United States and the Pacific Ocean. The GOES-T satellite is the third of four spacecraft in NOAA’s latest generation of weather satellites positioned in geostationary orbit, extending a record of continuous weather observations since the first GOES satellite launched in 1975.

GOES

The acronym "GOES" stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites and is applied to a certain fleet of weather satellites operated by NOAA. NOAA’s fleet of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES program, tracks hurricanes, severe storms (including thunderstorms), lightning, wildfires, dust storms, and other weather events in real-time, giving weather forecasters a minute-by-minute glimpse of conditions and weather trends.

The satellites are parked in a Geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, where they orbit Earth in lock-step with the planet’s rotation. NOAA maintains one operational GOES satellite in a western position over the Pacific Ocean and Western United States (named GOES-WEST), and another GOES spacecraft in an eastern slot to cover the Eastern United States, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean (named GOES-EAST).

Launch

The sattelite was rescheduled to be launched in March of 2022 earlier than previously planned in order to replace GOES-17 {the previous GOES WEST Satellite which was suffering from a malfunction of a component designed to cool the multi-spectral(many wavelengths) camera onboard (called the Advanced Baseline Imager). The malfunction degraded the quality of certain wavelengths of infrared photographs the camera captured.} GOES-T successfully launched into space aboard a 196-foot-tall (59.7-meter) Atlas 5 rocket on March 1 at 4:38 p.m. EST.

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Operation

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Rewrite after confirmation of satellite operation in Mid-summer of 2022.. (Discuss)

It is planned to become the primary observatory for tracking storms over the Pacific Ocean and the Western United States.

After opening protective doors on GOES-T’s instruments, the first images from the new satellite should come down in May of 2022, and NOAA plans provide data from the new weather satellite to forecasters on a provisional basis as soon as July. It will enter operational service in early 2023.

Other NOAA Weather Satellites

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  Image of the earth using the Mercator Projection constructed from NOAA satellite imagery.

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  Emblem of NASA, NASA partners with NOAA on development of weather satellites, overseeing contracts to develop the spacecraft, instruments, and procure launch vehicles. NOAA operates and owns the satellites.

See Also

• Weather Satellite
• Meteorology
• Weather
• NOAA
• NASA

External Links

• GOES-T Mission Overview

• More information about the mission of GOES-18/GOES-T and how it was launched: https://everydayastronaut.com/goes-t-atlas-v-541/ GOES T | Atlas V 541 | Everyday Astronaut.com