A new, high-tech satellite launched into space will help keep Middle Tennessee families safe during severe weather.
At 6:42 p.m. EST GOES-R successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Saturday on Nov. 19.
GOES-R is the newest and most sophisticated weather satellite ever launched and is expected to revolutionize weather forecasting.
GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. GOES-1 was the first in the series, it was launched in 1975.
Since then, over a dozen satellites have been launched. Once in orbit, GOES-R will be renamed GOES-16.
GOES-R will produce 50 times more data than it's predecessors, seeing severe weather 4 times clearer and 5 times faster.
One of the most significant instruments on GOES-R is the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, a first of it's kind lightning mapping system, that will map cloud to ground lightning, cloud to cloud lightning, and intra-cloud lightning (lightning within a cloud).
Lightning mapping will improve our ability to detect severe weather before it strikes. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is a highly sophisticated imager with 16 spectral bands that will be used to image Earth's weather, climate, oceans, and environment. The current satellites only have 5 spectral bands.
