NOAA GOES-U Weather Satellite Launch | SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket

NOAA GOES-U Weather Satellite Launch | SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket successfully launched the Lockheed Martin-built NOAA’s GOES-U weather satellite at 5:26 p.m. ET, Tuesday, June 25, 2024, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GOES-U satellite will be the final satellite in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-R series satellite program and the bridge to another future age of advanced satellite technology. For nearly 50 years, NOAA and NASA have partnered to develop and advance NOAA’s geostationary satellites as part of "the most sophisticated weather-observing, environmental monitoring, and space weather monitoring satellite system in the world."

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)

The most recent U.S. weather  satellite generation is the GOES-R series that first launched in 2016 with GOES-R or GOES-16. This series came with new instruments such as the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) and the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). GOES-U, the final satellite of the series, also has the Compact Coronagraph-1 (CCOR-1) to monitor the Sun’s corona for space weather forecasts.

After GOES-U launches, its successor will be a series called Geostationary Extended Observations, or GeoXO. The first satellite in the series is expected to launch in the early 2030s. GeoXO will continue NOAA’s five decades of critical Earth-observing data with new instruments onboard.

Image Credit: NASA's Launch Services Program/Lockheed Martin

Image Dates: June 24-25, 2024

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