Working at Satellite Launch Viewing: GOES-R

Rob and Tom

Since we work in the same place we had the opportunity to work a special viewing of a satellite launch.
    On Saturday, Nov. 19, NOAA's GOES-R satellite launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  There was a special viewing for employees in Maryland, so we both helped out with the event, setting up banners, arranging snacks, coordinating the local event and about 80 people showed up.
  There was a kick off talk from a scientist explaining about the satellite.

Launch of GOES-R at 6:42 p.m.EST

   For those of you  who have no idea what GOES-R is, we'll tell you. First, it's a weather satellite. It allows the National Weather Service to monitor weather in the U.S. (it is one of 2 that sit in a fixed orbit over the U.S. and that means that it's "Geostationary."). So when you see clouds and storms moving across the U.S. on TV, those images are from those to "Geostationary" or GOES satellites.


THE LAUNCH - At 6:42 p.m. on Nov. 19th as the day's launch window closed, the nearly 200-foot United Launch Alliance rocket bolted from Launch Complex 41 with more than 2.2 million pounds of thrust from a Russian main engine and four solid rocket boosters.

A packed room of viewers

 WHAT DOES GOES-R DO? 
(for info go to www.goes-r.gov) 
1) Scans of the Western Hemisphere from North Pole to South Pole will be collected five times faster — in just five minutes.
2) At the same time, images of local storm events can be refreshed as often as every 30 seconds. That means almost real-time, movie quality views will replace the blurrier time-lapse images available now.
3) he pictures will collect three times more information with four times better resolution, revealing features never seen before.

Rob and Tom at a display

4) Views down into a hurricane’s eye wall will help forecasters gauge if a storm is strengthening or weakening. That should improve tracking, and over time make for more accurate landfall predictions that prompt evacuation orders.
5) The imager will work with a new lightning mapper that will spot developing storms sooner, allowing forecasters to get warnings of tornadoes or flash floods out minutes earlier.

 LAUNCH VIDEO: https://youtu.be/FDhJYgcHDX8