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goes earth

NASA and NOAA launched a new atmospheric condition satellite dorsum in Nov of 2022 called GOES-R. That craft is now online and sending back images, and information technology's got a new (official) proper name. The newest and most advanced weather satellite keeping watch over America is GOES-16. To show off the impressive technological feats of GOES-xvi, NOAA has released a number of images taken by the satellite's Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument.

The other satellites in the GOES fleet are based on engineering science adult in the 1990s, and so GOES-xvi is a huge leap forward. It's in geostationary orbit over Due north and South America at an distance of 22,300 miles (around 35,888 km). That's high plenty to see a big chunk of the Earth in a single frame — not all of it, though. The higher up paradigm is a blended.

The ABI camera system is GOES-sixteen'south main musical instrument for tracking atmospheric condition. Like older GOES satellites, GOES-16 uses images of the moon (which doesn't change over time) to calibrate its sensors. It has four times the resolution of past weather satellite imagers, and it tin capture a full prototype of the World every 15 minutes. The continental US can be completely scanned in as little as five minutes. That's 5 times faster than older satellites. Check out the gallery of newly released images below. They were all taken on January 15th, 2022.

The scans it produces aren't but in the visible spectrum nosotros like to ogle. The ABI supports two visible, four nearly-infrared, and ten infrared channels. This gives meteorologists ample data to work with while developing forecasts and predicting the path of severe weather condition. There are also instruments designed to track lightning activeness and solar radiation on the satellite.

GOES-16 is fully online now, only it'due south not at its last operational coordinates. In May, NOAA will announce the final location for GOES-16. At that time, information technology will be maneuvered into position as either GOES-E or GOES-West. Information technology should be in its final orbit past November of this year.

NOAA is already making plans for the side by side GOES satellite, which will launch as GOES-Due south. This craft is already undergoing ecology testing at Lockheed Martin's Colorado facility. It will be launched in about a twelvemonth as GOES-17 and volition eventually have upward a position opposite from the i assigned to GOES-16.