GOES-S Satellite launched today: Improvements in weather observations to come

The Atlas V Rocket carrying GOES-S, the second satellite in the GOES-R series, launched today at 5:02 pm ET in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is a Geostationary Operational Environmental satellite that will significantly improve the way scientists and meteorologists track storms, lightning, fog, and fires in the western United States.

Geostationary means the satellite’s orbit is in sync with the rotation of the earth, so it stays hovering over one spot of the planet. The satellite will take a picture of the entire western hemisphere every 15 minutes, the continental United States every 5 minutes, and two more picture settings for storms every 60 and 30 seconds.

The new satellite will be called GOES-West when it becomes operational later this year. Since the western United States is very mountainous, ground based radar is blocked in some areas. For instance, here in west Texas and southern New Mexico, the eastern slopes of the Sacramento Mountains and parts of the Big Bend lack radar coverage due to the positioning and limitations of ground based radar.

This new satellite system will allow our StormTRACK Weather team to better observe storms over blocked areas and, in some cases, even see storms developing before they are detected by radar.