GOES-M Environmental Spacecraft Successfully Launched
An advanced environmental satellite equipped with instruments to monitor
Earth’s weather and with a telescope that will be used to detect solar
storms soared into space this morning at 3:23:01 a.m. EDT from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
The satellite, GOES-M, will monitor hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, flash
floods and other severe weather. It is the first of the GOES satellites
equipped with a Solar X-ray Imager which will be used to forecast earth
space weather due to solar activity.
NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-M spacecraft
was carried into space aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIA rocket.
Twenty-seven minutes later, the spacecraft separated from the Centaur stage.
At approximately 4:40 a.m., controllers successfully deployed the outer
panel of the solar array, making the spacecraft power positive.
“We’re off to a great start,” said Martin Davis, GOES project manager at
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “The spacecraft is now
in transfer orbit and all data indicates we have a healthy spacecraft.”
The spacecraft is a three-axis internally stabilized weather spacecraft that
has the dual capability of providing pictures while performing atmospheric
sounding at the same time. Once in geostationary orbit, the spacecraft is
to be designated GOES-12.
Throughout the next 17 days, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) controllers are scheduled to perform several apogee
motor firings and adjust maneuvers, culminating with the spacecraft arriving
in a geosynchronous orbit 22,240 miles (35,790 kilometers) above the Earth’s
equator at 90 degrees West Longitude. Controllers will operate the
spacecraft from the NOAA’s Satellite Operations Control Center in Suitland,
Md.
The first of several burns to move the spacecraft into its final orbit begin
approximately 20 hours after liftoff, when controllers perform the first
apogee motor firing, lasting for 53 minutes. The second firing is scheduled
for approximately four days after liftoff and will last for 30 minutes.
The third and final apogee motor firing is scheduled for approximately six
days after liftoff, and will last for approximately six minutes. Apogee is
the point at which a spacecraft is farthest from the Earth and at its
minimum velocity. Apogee burns are designed to boost GOES-M from its
transfer orbit to geosynchronous orbit.
The primary objective of the GOES-M launch is to provide a fully capable
spacecraft in on-orbit storage, which can be activated on short notice to
assure continuity of services from a two-spacecraft constellation.
GOES-M was built and launched for NOAA under technical guidance and project
management by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
GOES information and imagery are available on the World Wide Web at:
http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/
The images taken by the Solar X-ray Imager will be available in real time to
the general public via the World Wide Web, through NOAA’s National
Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo. When available, the images will be
at:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/stp.html
