GOES-U Launches to Space
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. The GOES-U satellite is the final satellite in the GOES-R series, which serves a critical role in providing continuous coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring tropical systems in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
On board GOES-U is a suite of seven instruments for collecting advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements, providing real-time mapping of lightning activity, and detecting approaching space weather hazards. Also onboard for the first time is the compact coronagraph that will observe the Sun’s outermost layer, called the corona, for large explosions of plasma that could produce geomagnetic solar storms.
GOES-U will be renamed GOES-19 when it reaches geostationary orbit. The GOES environmental monitoring satellite constellation is planned to operate into the 2030s.
Credit: NASA/SpaceX
Image Number: KSC-20240625-PH-SPX01_0016
Date: June 25, 2024
GOES-U Launches to Space
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. The GOES-U satellite is the final satellite in the GOES-R series, which serves a critical role in providing continuous coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring tropical systems in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
On board GOES-U is a suite of seven instruments for collecting advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements, providing real-time mapping of lightning activity, and detecting approaching space weather hazards. Also onboard for the first time is the compact coronagraph that will observe the Sun’s outermost layer, called the corona, for large explosions of plasma that could produce geomagnetic solar storms.
GOES-U will be renamed GOES-19 when it reaches geostationary orbit. The GOES environmental monitoring satellite constellation is planned to operate into the 2030s.
Credit: NASA/SpaceX
Image Number: KSC-20240625-PH-SPX01_0016
Date: June 25, 2024