As Hurricane Helene prepared to make landfall near Perry, Florida on Sept. 27, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) captured the phenomena through the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) system and issued advanced warning of the impending Category 4 storm as it was forming. Just two weeks later they watched and warned as Hurricane Milton arrived 200 miles south.
The GOES constellation is part of a broad spectrum of space-based capabilities that play a critical role in weather and environmental monitoring on Earth, enabling innovative advancements for weather forecasting, natural disaster preparation and rescue coordination.
A collaborative effort between NOAA and NASA, the two-satellite GOES system operates from approximately 22,300 miles above Earth. Together, GOES-East and GOES-West watch over more than half the globe, protecting over a billion people in and around the Americas.
From early in its mission lifecycle, the GOES-R program has relied on The Aerospace Corporation for a variety of activities and milestones, which has contributed its technical and integrative expertise.
“Aerospace has supported the GOES-R series since its inception,” said Peter Phillips, Principal Director in the Civil Systems Group at Aerospace. “Think about a time before we had weather satellites, one of the best examples being the Galveston Hurricane disaster that happened in 1900. Nobody saw it coming, and thousands of people died,. The motivation for weather prediction eventually led to weather satellites, and that directly contributes to preserving life, health and property. The GOES satellites in particular really are hurricane hunters and hurricane finders, and just the fact that they're able to give advanced warning many days ahead for people to clear out has literally helped to save millions. You can't put a value on that.”
The GOES program isn’t just about the satellites in orbit, either. In fact, GOES-R includes a very robust ground system to process the significant volume of data in order to be delivered to users. During the development and integration phases of the GOES-R program, Aerospace’s embedded team was instrumental in ensuring the successful implementation and transition of operations ahead of the first launch. In addition to supporting the flight operations, Aerospace also led a first-of-its-kind data operations support team, actively managing processing and delivery of all GOES data products to users.
Aerospace also collaborated with operations and engineering stakeholders to ensure space-to-ground communications worked flawlessly throughout the GOES-R missions. In addition, Aerospace’s experts provided valuable technical contributions to address hardware challenges, including resolving issues with the uplink/downlink antennas.
With the final GOES-R satellite now in orbit, NOAA is already looking to develop and build the next generation weather satellite constellation. The Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO), which will expand on GOES-R, will advance capabilities to address emerging environmental issues regarding the weather, ocean and climate. Aerospace is already supporting the early stages of this program, which plans to begin operating in the early 2030s.