NORFOLK, Va. — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is planning to launch the GOES-U satellite on Tuesday afternoon from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
This is the final satellite in the GOES series, a weather satellite program that has been in operation for five decades. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite.
Once the GOES-U is launched and successfully reaches its orbit 22,236 miles above the Earth, it will be renamed GOES 19 and replace the aging GOES 16.
The job of GOES 19 will be to monitor environmental and weather developments over the United States, Central America, and across the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite will be our primary eyes on the tropical Atlantic Basin, providing essentially real-time observation of tropical developments in greater detail than previously possible.
Among other enhancements: the latest GOES satellite has GLM, an advanced lightning detection system that will help us better monitor thunderstorms and the dangers of different types of lightning strikes. It also has new sensing equipment to monitor solar activity and space weather.
The satellite is expected to be in service into the 2030s, when NOAA will begin its next generation of weather satellites, named the GEOXO program.
Tuesday's launch window for the GOES-U satellite begins at 5:16 p.m. EDT.