CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The green lights continue to shine for the launch of a powerful U.S. weather satellite.
GOES-Uthe fourth and final member of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-R series of next-generation weather data. Satelliteshas received clearance for the planned launch on Tuesday (25 June) following a thorough review of its readiness on Monday (24 June).
The two-hour launch window for GOES-U opens at 5:16 p.m. EDT (9:16 p.m. GMT) on Tuesday. The spacecraft will be mounted on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket from launch complex 39A in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here on the Space Coast, weather permitting. This will be the 10th Falcon Heavy launch and the 65th orbital launch of 2024 for SpaceX.
Late Monday afternoon (June 24), members of the mission and launch teams briefed the media on the final checklist items for Tuesday’s launch.
“The GOES-U spacecraft is ready, the launch vehicle is ready, and we look forward to putting the spacecraft into orbit,” said Denton Gibson, senior mission manager in NASA’s Launch Services Program, during a press conference Monday.
A lot of work was needed to get everything ready. For example, on Sunday evening (June 23), while preparing for the rollout of GOES-U and the Falcon Heavy to the launch pad on Monday, the launch team discovered a problem with the transport vehicle’s air conditioning system.
“The system has redundant parallel systems, and one of those legs was not working,” said Julianna Schiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA science missions, at Monday’s press conference. “We decided to protect the vehicle and make sure the transport air conditioning system was fully functional. Now that transport unit is fully functional and delivering very cold air.”
But this is Florida. Even if all systems go, one big question remains: Will Mother Nature play along?
“For all weather rules that we evaluate, we assume a 70% probability of violation or a 30% chance of compliance,” said Brian Cizek, weather officer for the US Space Force45th Weather Squadron, said during the press conference on Monday.
There are a set of 10 weather rulesor criteria that must be met for the launch to take place. In typical Florida fashion, there are concerns that there could be thunderstorms in the afternoon or that clouds could form that could cause the Falcon Heavy to generate its own lightning during the launch. That would be a dangerous situation.
“It is interesting that a rocket can actually cause a lightning strike that is not [otherwise] occurred,” Cizek told Space.com. “Certain types of clouds in certain layers of the atmosphere can actually contain a charge that is not strong enough for a natural lightning strike, but could trigger a lightning strike. That’s exactly what these rules are designed to protect against.”
However, the two-hour starting window gives the team a real chance to get going.
“Even if we break the rules in part of the window, we can move things around if the weather looks better,” Cizek said. “So if it looks worse early in the window, we can move to the middle or end of the window if we see the storms subsiding. I think there will be an opportunity, and we’ll work closely with our launch weather team.”
Like its satellite siblings, GOES-U will be equipped with a wealth of scientific bells and whistles. The new spacecraft’s instruments will provide state-of-the-art images. It will also study Earth’s weather, oceans and environment in detail, including mapping lightning activity in real time. GOES-U’s scientific equipment features updates and improvements over its predecessors’ instruments and features a brand new compact coronagraph Tool to support Space weather Forecasts.
You can Follow the launch live here on Space.comCourtesy of NASA. Coverage will begin no earlier than 3:00 p.m. EDT (7:00 p.m. GMT).
The successor to NOAA’s GOES-R series will be the Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite system, The launch is planned for the early 2030s.