The term goes is an informal way of asking what is happening or has happened. This is a very common phrase, and can be used in a wide variety of situations. Whether it is used as a casual greeting, or in a conversation about weather or news events, the meaning of the phrase stays the same. However, there are different ways to pronounce the word, and some of them may be more appropriate in certain circumstances.
In the early days of geostationary orbit satellites, communications were only possible for a few hours a day. This was due to the fact that the satellite was only above the horizon at two extremes of its figure-8 orbit and could not be tracked at all for the rest of the time. A nine-meter dish was required to obtain data from the satellite, but this only worked in the optimum conditions. Data rates were around 2.048 megabytes per second (bi-directional).
GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES system provides a continuous stream of environmental information to support weather forecasting, severe storm tracking, and meteorology research. The GOES spacecraft and ground-based elements work together to produce images of Earth and its atmosphere.
The GOES program is the nation’s premier weather satellite system. NOAA’s two operational GOES spacecraft, GOES East and GOES West, monitor more than half of the Earth’s surface, from near the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle. GOES data is essential to NWS operations, and also supports scientific research in atmospheric science, meteorology, satellite design and development, numerical weather prediction models, and space environment monitoring.
GOES includes the following payload instruments: a multichannel imager, a sounder, and a space environment monitor (SEM). The GOES Imager is an ultraviolet/visible spectroradiometer that captures various weather-related phenomena such as cloud tops, lightning, and ocean surface temperatures. The Sounder is a 19-channel radiometer that senses emitted and reflected solar energy to produce vertical atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles.
The SEM is a suite of sensors that measure the near-Earth solar-terrestrial electromagnetic environment by collecting and processing spacecraft data transmitted by the GOES Imager, Sounder, and other onboard sensors. These data are transmitted to NOAA’s NESDIS DCS ground receive system CDA (Command and Data Acquisition Station) at Wallops Island, Virginia, and then routed through DAPS (Data Collection System Automatics Processing System) on the GOES satellite for dissemination to the public.
GOES is a joint NOAA/NASA program with NASA responsible for the spacecraft design, procurement, and launch, and NOAA managing the satellite and its instruments in orbit. The GOES series has been in service since 1975, and its data products have led to more accurate and timely weather forecasts and a better understanding of long-term climate conditions. In addition to providing vital environmental information, GOES data is important for monitoring and alerting people to dangers from space, such as the effects of solar flares on satellite communications systems and power grids.