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"With lives and property always in jeopardy during severe weather
events, having GOES-N available to step in means NOAA will always be
prepared to issue timely forecasts and warnings," said retired Navy
Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., Ph.D., NOAA administrator and
the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere. NOAA's
two operational GOES spacecraft -- GOES-12, hovering above the
equator in the east, and GOES-10, above the equator in the west --
provide continuous environmental observations of North, Central and
South America and surrounding oceans. The satellites supply data
critical for fast, accurate weather forecasts and warnings,
detecting solar storm activity, relaying distress signals from
emergency beacons, monitoring the oceans and scanning the landscape
for the latest drought and flood conditions. When GOES-N reaches
orbit, it will be renamed GOES-13 and put in a storage mode as a
backup to GOES-10 and GOES-12 until it is called into service.
"GOES-N, like the rest of NOAA's satellites, will help us take
the pulse of the world's changing environment and strengthen the
Global Earth Observation System of Systems,"
Lautenbacher added. GEOSS is an agreement signed by 60 nations
and the European Commission that commits to linking existing
environmental monitoring technology into one system, which can
better predict weather and climate and prepare for natural hazards.
"After such an active, deadly 2004 hurricane season and with the
same forecast again for 2005, forecasters at the National Hurricane
Center welcome this insurance that real-time GOES data and images
will remain accessible when and where we need it," said Max
Mayfield, director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center. "It's not
only helpful for forecasters, but for people in harm's way of these
approaching storms."
GOES-N, the first spacecraft in the new GOES-N/O/P series, will
feature a highly stable pointing platform, which will improve the
performance of the imager and sounder instruments. GOES-N will also
have expanded measurements for the space and solar environment
monitoring instruments, a new dedicated broadcast capability to be
used by the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network, and a
new digital weather facsimile capability for higher-quality
transmissions of data and products.
"The solar X-ray imager is to space weather forecasting what
satellite imagery is to hurricane forecasting," said Ernie Hildner,
director of NOAA's Space Environment Center, in Boulder, Colo. "It
is helping to improve forecasts and warnings for solar disturbances,
protecting billions of dollars worth of commercial and government
assets in space and on the ground, and lessening the brunt of power
surges for the satellite-based electronics and communications
industry."
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 For NOAA's National Ocean Service, data from GOES-N will be
valuable for its scientists. "The same GOES data that drives weather
forecasts go into oceanographic circulation models and ecological
forecasts for U.S. coastal communities," said Margaret Davidson,
director of the National Ocean Service Coastal Services Center.
Because its power system will collect and store more power from
the sun, GOES-N will not be hampered by outages, which result in
"blind spots" in the data. It will also offer NOAA's National
Weather Service forecasters more yearly data by providing almost an
additional 1,384 frames, or pictures, from the imager and 512
frames, or sounding areas, from the sounder. In the past, GOES,
which gets its electrical energy from the sun, was affected by the
long spring and fall eclipse seasons, which lessened solar
radiation. Now, upgraded solar array and battery technologies have
fixed the problem.
"We are very proud to have been responsible for bringing GOES-N,
with its improved performance, into our constellation of
environmental satellites that serve the nation," said Gregory W.
Withee, assistant administrator for NOAA's Satellite and Information
Service.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the design,
development and launch of NOAA satellites. Boeing, acting as lead
contractor, built GOES-N. The GOES-N imager and sounder were built
and tested at ITT in Fort Wayne, Ind. Lockheed Martin Solar and
Astrophysics developed the solar X-ray imager. GOES-N will be
launched on a Boeing Delta IV expendable vehicle.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of
the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic
security and national safety through the prediction and research of
weather and climate-related events and providing environmental
stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources.
On the Web:
[National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration news release]
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