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[ Kathleen McIntyre ] The GOES satellites are really a national treasure.

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[ Andre Dress ] These satellites are providing a huge service and they provide the safety net

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for people so that they get out of harms way. When I think of GOES,

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it’s not just a weather satellite.

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[ Dr. Howard J. Singer ] The GOES satellites provide us very critical data for space weather.

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[ Paul Richards ] That’s very critical and very important for astronauts because

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we are not protected from Earth’s atmosphere from the space weather.

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[ Andre Dress ] One of the big things is Search and Rescue.

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[ Mickey Fitzmaurice ] The GOES satellites save lives not just through search and rescue

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distress alert but with real-time monitoring of severe weather events.

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[ dramatic music ]

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[ Andre Dress ] Well, GOES-P is the last in the series.

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[ Kathleen McIntyre ] We want to make sure that we have the capability on orbit

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for continuous weather monitoring for this country.

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[ Andre Dress ] So GOES-P will be important to be a spare satellite.

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[ Kathleen McIntyre ] The first GOES satellite was launched in 1975

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and it was called GOES-A. It was the first time we actually saw an image

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of what the weather was creating on Earth.

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[ Andre Dress ] They were satellites we called spinners. The instrument that was on it actually rotated

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with the satellite so it took a long time to actually get the images from the Earth.

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[ Tom Fields ] The next generation, which was the previous one to the current generation, I through M,

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was the first series that was 3-axis stabilized, which meant it actually

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sat and pointed at the Earth as supposed to spinning and having to take images while it’s spinning.

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[ Kathleen McIntyre ] So we were able to continuously monitor weather.

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[ music ]

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[ Andre Dress ] We jumped to a 3-axis stabilized spacecraft.

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[ Mickey Fitzmaurice ] The next generation is always better than the previous generation.

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GOES-P will be the best of the lot.

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[ Andre Dress ] The spacecraft has the ability to be very very stable.

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[ Tom Fields ] Our images; our data is used real-time.

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Real-time we have to be able to calibrate and know that when we look at that .

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image, where exactly is that point on the Earth’s surface.

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[ Andre Dress ] When we have a huge hurricane, we want to have an accurate prediction. If it’s off by

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kilometers or miles, you’ve got people in harms way that you

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didn’t think were going to be in harms way.

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[ Jolyn Russell ] So when the spacecraft is sitting in space, it’s looking down at the Earth and it stays

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stationary like this but this solar array out here moves and tracks

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the sun so that way it’s always looking at the sun and can take a scan every minute.

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[ Paul Richards ] Different phenomenon from the sun is constantly

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bombarding the Earth. Although you might not know it, the solar weather affects you

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every day down here as well, not only just astronauts, it affects people on Earth.

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[ Janet Green ] Space weather can affect the power grid. It can affect communication with planes, it can cause errors

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in GPS, it can damage satellites.

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[ Dr. Howard J. Singer ] That whole series of satellites, GOES N-O-P,

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has some new capabilities for us in space weather. This is data that arrives

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almost instantaneously and therefore allows us

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to provide very timely alerts and warnings.

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[ Mickey Fitzmaurice ] The search and rescue system is another valuable tool for these satellites.

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In many cases one or two bursts from a beacon

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saves a person’s life.

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[ Paul Richards ] GOES satellites are operational satellites, meaning

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they are not experimental, they are constantly up there so it is

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constantly giving us data with no gaps in

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the data coming to us.

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[ Andre Dress ] In the future, we are going to get better resolution

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and not only that but faster images.

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We can start getting images on the order of 5 minutes as supposed to 26 minutes it takes