New Satellite in Orbit

Twelve days after a perfect launch, NASA and NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-P (GOES-P) reached its proper orbit. This action triggers the renaming of the satellite to GOES-15. The latest weather satellite will complete its checkout in mid August 2010 and be stored in-orbit, ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel.

Andre Dress, NASA GOES Deputy Project Manager, noted, “The NASA team has done an excellent job and the spacecraft performance has been near perfect. Reaching the proper orbit marks a significant milestone, but we still have a lot of work to complete. We remain focused on the tasks at hand and look forward to complete mission success.”

Since its launch onboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket on March 4, the satellite has undergone 5 orbit raising maneuvers before arriving at its checkout longitude of 90° West, where it orbits at approximately 22 thousand miles above the Earth’s surface.

NASA Engineers and controllers deployed the Solar Array on March 17 and they will turn on the Imager and Sounder on March 23. The Imager is expected to capture the first visible image on April 5.

GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft to be launched in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. With two operational satellites, they provide weather observations that cover over 50 percent of the Earth’s surface.

Boeing Satellite and Intelligence Systems operations will transition the routine health and safety monitoring to the NASA Goddard operations team on March 24. At that time the NASA and NOAA team will commence with the post launch verification testing which will last for approximately 150 days. Once all the systems are checked out, the satellite will be turned over to NOAA for operational control.

Satellites are something meteorologists have come to rely heavily on for a great deal of information in observing the atmosphere to maintain our edge in forecasting.

-Brian-

Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts