Title: GOES-O Mission Overview Video

TRT: 3:41

Synopsis:

GOES-O is set for an upcoming launch in 2009

and it will be the latest in a series of satellites that has forecasted

the development of severe weather for over 25 years. Operated by NOAA

and launched by NASA, GOES-O will continue providing critical data used

for real-time weather prediction on Earth as well as space weather events.

URL for more info:

http://www.nasa.gov/GOES-O

Keywords:

Goes, goes-o, weather, weather satellites, Earth, climate, hurricanes, tornadoes, geostationary environmental operational satellite, NOAA, NASA, geosynchronous

TRANSCRIPTS:

Andre’ Dress, NASA GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: In the case of Katrina, I remember watching on TV, looking at the satellite and seeing the predictions, and the predictions were pretty much right on.

Tom Wrublewski, NOAA Satellite Acquisition Manager: If you go back and look at the National Hurricane Center out of Miami, six days out they gave very accurate forecast where hurricane Katrina was going to go.

Andre’ Dress/GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: All those images that you saw were coming from the GOES satellite.

The luxury we have with those new satellites and their new capabilities and their accuracy is that to get people out of the way when we know it’s going to hit, is a serious advantage that these satellites are providing us.

John Fiorello, NASA GOES-O Mission Operations Systems Engineer: Every time there is a hurricane, I know that GOES is there, and it’s helping protect lives.

Tom Wrublewski, NOAA Satellite Acquisition Manager: The next GOES satellite to be launched is GOES-O.

Andre’ Dress/GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: We are planning to launch in April-May timeframe of 2009.

We have two satellites that are operational but our philosophy also is to launch spares, so GOES-O is actually going into a spare slot. So if one of them were to fail abruptly, we would activate the one that’s in storage.

GOES, the “G” stands for “geosynchronous”, and it’s out about 36,000km and it sits on the Equator.

Tom Wrublewski, NOAA Satellite Acquisition Manager: GOES is looking at the continental US and the Earth all the time, so we can really dwell on storms. That’s why GOES is more critical for the daily weather monitoring and GOES is what you see every night on TV.

John Fiorello, NASA GOES-O Mission Operations Systems Engineer: Some of the main improvements we have on GOES-O are in the stability and the reliability of the pointing of the image data that we get from our primary instruments that look at the Earth.

Voice of Steve Benner, NASA GOES-O Instruments Systems Manager: The new ones, we have better resolution, so they take better pictures when they photograph from space. Then you can see actually what’s going on inside the hurricane.

Andre’ Dress/GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: These instruments on the GOES spacecraft are also very powerful and they can penetrate down into the atmosphere and focus right in on those hurricanes that you may see coming across the Atlantic.

John Fiorello, NASA GOES-O Mission Operations Systems Engineer: We also monitor the space weather and have the ability to forecast additional high levels of radiation for the astronauts on the space station as well as some interruptions in terrestrial communications.

Andre’ Dress/GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: The data that come from the GOES satellite is almost instantaneous; we call it “real time”.

Chris Wheeler, NOAA GOES Team Lead: This is the GOES Operations Room. This is where we operate all the GOES satellites.

Ok, so what we have right here is our product monitor display. This data is coming in real time from the satellite. That’s important because we want to make sure that the weather patterns that we are seeing are actually over the correct areas.

John Fiorello, NASA GOES-O Mission Operations Systems Engineer: Whenever severe storms occur on the continental United States or out in the Atlantic Ocean, that are forming hurricanes, the GOES-O satellite has the ability to focus in and track those severe storms so that meteorologists can provide better forecasting and warning for the people who may be affected.

Voice Over (launch countdown): Lift off of the next generation weather satellite into space…

Andre’ Dress/GOES-N Series Deputy Project Manager: If you did not have those satellites, it would probably end up costing you more in peoples’ lives and property than it would be for the cost of the satellite itself and the whole operation and I don’t know if we could put a dollar figure on a life…anyways.