GOES is an orbiting satellite system that provides weather information to NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) and other users. The GOES program is a joint project of NOAA and NASA. NOAA operates the spacecraft and distributes the data, and NASA builds and launches them.
Two satellites, GOES East and GOES West, continuously observe the United States and its surrounding oceans. Their three-axis, body-stabilized design allows the sensors to “stare” at the Earth for long periods of time – 10 minutes on GOES-West and 20 minutes on GOES-East – and continuously capture images, track clouds, record temperatures and moisture in the atmosphere, measure radiation (including solar X-rays), and sound the atmosphere for vertical temperature and water vapor profiles.
GOES satellites provide real-time, high-resolution images and atmospheric products to forecasters at local and regional NWS offices. These images are crucial in determining weather conditions such as storm development, lightning strikes, precipitation intensity and spatial coverage, hurricane tracking and evolution, and sea and lake ice formation. They also provide the basis for weather analyses used to issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, flash flood watches and advisories, and winter snow fall accumulation reports.
The GOES satellites and their instruments are operated from the NOAA Satellite Operations Center (NOSC) in Suitland, Maryland. During severe weather events and other events, NOSC may modify the normal schedules for some instrument modes to more closely follow specific locations or phenomena. The GOES series of geostationary satellites are also equipped with the Space Environment Monitoring (SEM) instrument package that includes the Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) and space-weather warnings.
A specialized feature of GOES is the Distress Signal (DS) capability, which can detect and alert meteorologists to distress signals from ships and aircraft. This is accomplished through a combination of spectral response functions that monitor the presence and intensity of a distress signal at various wavelengths in the visible and near-infrared. DS observations can be used to identify the location, type and intensity of the distress signal and help meteorologists determine its potential impact on human lives or property.
In addition to its core weather mission, GOES-R (the GOES-R Series) will provide improved products and capabilities such as an Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), Space-Earth Connections Suite (SEISS) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), and a new space environmental in situ suite (SES). The new GOES-U satellite, currently scheduled for launch in May 2024, will replace GOES-16 as GOES-East and carry six sensors including an ABI. It will also feature a fast temporal cadence of imagery that will greatly improve aviation safety by allowing a faster response to rapidly changing conditions such as volcanic ash plumes. GOES-U will also be the first NOAA satellite to incorporate a Geostationary Wide-Area Thermal Imaging Sensor (GWTIS) that can detect, identify and characterize smoke and fires. This is important for aviation safety as well as wildfires and volcanic eruptions.