Lockheed Martin sharpens weather predictions
The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES spacecraft, have provided us with dependable weather forecasts for decades. Jeff Shook1, the GOES Spacecraft Director at Lockheed Martin answers our questions about the newest generation, the GOES-R Series:
Q – What is the GOES-R program?
A – Powered with Saft’s lithium-ion (Li-ion) VL48E cells, four new weather satellites in the GOES series are designed and built by Lockheed Martin, enabling more precise weather predic-tions.
Q – What have been some of the neatest technological advancements in the space industry you’ve seen?
A – After 33 years in the business, I’ve slowly watched spacecraft and weather satellite technologies evolve, enabling enhancements along the way. For the GOES-R program, advancements boil down to the ability to see clearly and “stare” at the earth at all times, day or night.
Nobody wants to be offline, so band-width is important to allow us to bring down the very high resolution data and information.
Also, power density and efficiency are more important than ever, and Saft’s compact, high-power Li-ion batteries help free up weight and space, allowing my team to put supple-mentary features and bandwidth capa-bilities on-board.
Q – How will the on-board scientific equipment help us on earth?
A – We have three main types of equip-ment on board the GOES-R satellites to detect weather changes or interfer-ences:
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper will help map or detect lightning over land and oceans, helping increase lead time with storms and the ability to get out of harm’s way more quickly. Additionally, it will increase prediction accuracy.
The Solar Ultraviolet Imager will stare at the sun and look at it in ultra-violet spectrums, or different wave-lengths of energy or light. It will scan for active regions on the sun to predict if high energy particles thrown from the sun are on track to come close enough to affect systems used on earth.
Subsequently, the Magnetometer will, for example, sense magnetic storms that could interfere with radio traffic frequency. This instrument confirms what the Solar Ultraviolet Imager predicts.
GOES-R will transmit more data in its first six months of operation than all previous GOES weather satellites combined.
Q – What do you see coming in the future for satellite technology?
A – Personally, I think the scientific community will likely be continuing to examine ways to more closely watch the coastline, peer more into the oceans and watch changes in tempera-ture currents, biology and ice packs to better inform our climate studies and models.
These images of the sun were captured at the same time on January 29, 2017 by the six channels on the Solar Ultraviolet Imager or SUVI instrument aboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite. Data from SUVI will provide an estimation of coronal plasma temperatures and emission measurements which are important to space weather forecasting.
These images of the sun were captured at the same time on January 29, 2017 by the six channels on the Solar Ultraviolet Imager or SUVI instrument aboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite. Data from SUVI will provide an estimation of coronal plasma temperatures and emission measurements which are important to space weather forecasting.
1. Jeff Shook is the GOES Spacecraft Director at Lockheed Martin. His team, along with their industry partners, is responsible for the design, build, test and delivery - everything it takes to build the spacecraft bus, including the software, rocket engines, structure, battery and power systems.