Orlando, Florida – NASA launched the GOES-U high-definition environmental satellite this Tuesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
According to the space agency, the satellite will allow NASA to detect storms earlier and will help meteorologists warn the population of imminent natural threats sooner.
The rocket took off around 5:16 pm from Cape Canaveral, central Florida.
The GOES-U satellite is the latest addition to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-R series of geostationary satellites.
It will be the last of the GOES, as a new generation of weather satellites is on the horizon.
These satellites provide advanced imagery, real-time mapping of lightning activity, and tracking and monitoring of weather conditions.
GOES-U has high-tech tools, such as the Advanced Baseline Imager, which will be used to obtain images of the oceans, climate and other indicators of the Earth’s environment.
It is also equipped with a new sensor called Compact Chronograph, which will help detect solar activity and its eruptions more quickly.
The GOES satellite series began with GOES-A in 1975, and the most recent was launched in 2022, GOES-T.
The launch of this latest meteorological satellite occurs when the hurricane season has just begun in the Atlantic basin, which began on June 1 and is expected to be significantly more active than normal this year, as announced by NOAA at the end of May.
Forecasts indicate that this year there will be between 8 and 13 hurricanes, of which 7 may be larger, with winds exceeding 178 kilometers per hour.
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