#goes 16

NASA weather satellite, Virtual Telescope capture Perseverance rover, Ingenuity launch to Mars- Technology News, Firstpost

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FP TrendingAug 06, 2020 17:11:37 IST

It’s been just a week since the launch of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover aboard the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. While it will take another 7 months to reach Mars, a weather satellite and a robotic telescope have captured interesting glimpses of its launch.

The satellite GOES 16 spotted the smoke plume released after the rover’s launch from…

A couple of NOAA/NASA images of the recent eclipse.

The first one: GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) captured the shadow of the moon moving through a area severe weather featuring frequent cloud-to-ground lightning in the upper Midwest yesterday, August 21, 2017! The first instrument of its kind in geostationary orbit, GLM observes total lightning (both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground), and offers a constant vigil for lightning flashes day and night across the Western Hemisphere.

The second one: From a million miles out in space, NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) on board NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this loop composed of 12 natural color images of the moon’s shadow crossing over North America on August 21, 2017. EPIC photographs the full sunlit side of Earth every day, giving it a unique view of total solar eclipses.

And one more, another from GOES-16, but in geocolor animation:

I’m posting some videos taken by the GOES 16 satellite. Here’s a description of what it is, from the Orlando Sentinel. As you read this, and see a comparison of the “old” technology with this new technology, keep in mind that one of the key objectives of the trump administration is to severely reduce federal budget expenditures for science and technology. Another objective of trump and the trump administration is to degrade the public’s respect for science.  Also keep in mind GOES 16 is still testing, so these images don’t reflect full operational status. It will go fully operational in November 2017.

Satellite images of Hurricane Irma that show its size as it moves toward Florida show off one of the National Weather Service’s newest high-tech tools: an $11 billion satellite known as GOES-16. Tracking powerful storms and relaying data and information back to earth, ground systems for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite were built by Harris Corporation in Central Florida.

Although it’s still in a testing phase – the satellite isn’t expected to fully go live until November – the powerful back-to-back hurricanes of Irma and Harvey in recent weeks have given the agency a chance to test it out. The data it has collected is meant to improve forecasters’ predictions and, so far, GOES-16 has passed its early tests, experts say.

“GOES-16 is giving us a keen sense of the intensity of the hurricane,” said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist at the National Weather Center’s Weather Prediction Center. “The key is to get as much information to the public as accurately and as quickly as possible. With data coming in as quickly as it does now, it gives a forecaster more confidence in their predictions.”

The satellite can send updated data to forecasters as frequently as every 30 seconds. Previous satellites often took several minutes.

NASA launched the GOES-16 satellite Nov. 19 on a United launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. It was renamed after reaching orbit, previously known as GOES-R, and is the first of a four-satellite system meant to modernize what had been an aging fleet of prediction aides.

First, a before and after:

Now, one of the videos of Irma, showing it moving along over several days. The satellite is picking up lightening flashes in this video run, testing one of its new capabilities:

Here, a close up of Hurricane Irma’s eye:

And a Hurricane Harvey video:

Finally, Hurricane Irma churning through the State of Florida, into Georgia: