GOES-T Satellite Launched Aboard Atlas V Rocket for US Weather and Global Climate Monitoring

The Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) was recently launched aboard the GOES-T satellite from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

GOES-T detached from the upper stage of Atlas V after 3.5 hours from liftoff. The mission's management published the updates on the social media platform Twitter today.

GOES-T to Geostationary Orbit

(Photo: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Atlas V rocket carrying the GOES-T weather satellite launches from the Space Launch Complex 41 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 1, 2022.

GOES-T is among the latest satellites by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) R series. The project costs $11.7 billion and will be deployed at approximately 35,900 kilometers above Earth's surface, right on the geostationary region of the orbit.

From its position, the GOES-T will help a number of ground-based scientific studies. The position was intended for the satellite to monitor natural hazards and weather conditions above the United States.

GOES-18 will be the new name of the satellite once it successfully reaches the geostationary orbit.

NOAA GOES-R specialist Dan Lindsey told Friday that the satellite would be positioned 89.5 degrees west to oversee the central US. From there, the GOES-T will commence its post-launch tests that will periodically repeat for the upcoming months, the expert continued.

Separation confirmed! Putting the best technology into space for weather forecasting, the United Launch Alliance #AtlasV rocket has deployed the @NOAASatellites' #GOEST observatory into orbit. https://t.co/uoth3iimrB #ReadyToGOES pic.twitter.com/9j6umCdttM
— ULA (@ulalaunch) March 2, 2022

In May, the GOES-T will change position 137 degrees west, near the eastern Pacific. According to Lindsay, the satellite will carry out the plan to replace the GOES-17 by 2023.

GOES-17 had significant issues with the cooling system of an equipped instrument called the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Online since 2018, its service will be continued by the GOES-18. The new satellite will then operate together with its counterpart GOES-East which oversees the regions of New Zealand to Africa's west coast.

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Monitoring Natural Phenomena and Hazards

The tracking of the GOES-18 will cover regions from the Pacific Ocean, United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Lindsay explained that the smoke from North America's wildfires and the Pacific storms would be included in the monitoring of the satellite up above its geostationary position.

According to the expert, future forecasts and emergencies can get the data collected by the satellite. From the widescale calamities to the western wildfires, the GOES-T will be able to point out the exact locations and measurements required by the ground team.

A new version of the advanced lightning mapper instrument equipped in the previous GOES-Rs was also attached to the GOES-T satellite. Lockheed Martin's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) expert and lead Tewa Kpulun said that through the pressures and heat, the instrument could detail lightning strikes as well as the atomic oxygen it produces.

GOES-T's GLM is built with three optical filters to protect the device from intense solar glare. In this way, the satellite would observe lightning strikes even in the day but without the excess spill of light that can hinder the instrument's perspective.

L3Harris Technologies chief engineer Daniel Gall said that the ABI device has 16 spectral bands that can see through a wide spectrum of wavelengths, a feature that is beneficial for pure quality imaging. The instrument will capture the full image of our planet every 10 minutes.