Intro music.
22 thousand miles away from Earth, the GOES satellites
keep a watchful eye on our planet at all times,sending real-time
data to help predict weather days in advance.
At the same time, a set of instruments carried on board GOES, monitor our sun
and provide critical data for space weather prediction.
You may then ask yourself 'Why do that? Why do we care?'
Andre Dress: When you think of space weather and they talk about
things like solar wind, It’s not the wind that you breath,
this is radiation that’s coming off of the sun;
Protons, electrons that come streaming off of the sun towards the Earth and they get
caught in the Earth’s magnetic field.They get mirrored down to the poles, you see
the aurora borealis and they heat the Earth’s environment and then it cools…
…and so that heating and that cooling certainly has an impact on Earth-
based weather. Paul Richards: You may not know it but you can have a solar storm
and all of a sudden you are pumping gas with your credit
card and it’s not working in the machine. That could be from a disruption of communication
satellites from solar weather. So, the solar weather affects you
everyday down here as well, not only just astronauts…it affects
people on Earth. Narrator: In fact, space weather data is so
important for our everyday life here on Earth, that there are people who actually
monitor that data 24 hours a day, three hundred
sixty five days a year. Howard Singer: Hello, I am Howard Singer, chief scientist at
NOAA’s space weather prediction center here in Boulder, CO. We study
the space environment and provide information about what’s going on in
space and on the Earth that’s influenced by our sun.
The antennas that you see behind me are used to capture data
from the Geosynchronous satellites; the GOES satellites; that are over 22
thousand miles above us here in Boulder. Bob Rutledge: This is manned
24/7, 365. Space weather can happen in any time
The forecasters assimilate all this data to develop both
probabilistic forecast for the next 24 hours. The forecasters can also issue
alerts and warnings in real time. Janet Green: The people that use our
data are the power companies because space weather can actually
cause problems for the power grid and black outs.
NASA uses our data to let the astronauts know to go to a safer place.
Paul Richards: Typically it has to be clear to go out on a spacewalk because you
do subject yourself to even higher radiation because you are not shielded
by either the shuttle or the space station. Janet Green: Also GPS users
use our data because space weather can increase errors in GPS
We can do things like warn planes that if they fly in
a certain latitude, they will loose communications.
Or we can let satellite operators know that radiation levels are high
and they can operate their instrument in a way that can make them less susceptible
Rodney Viereck: All of these new customers; these new technologies, now depend on
space weather in order to protect their systems.
Narrator: Other satellites, such as Stereo, SOHO,
and SDO are dedicated to help scientists study the sun.
Space weather forecasters use that data as well to create
different models. So why then, would a weather satellite like GOES
need to also look at the sun? Paul Richards: SOHO, Stereo,
SDO going up, they are all NASA experimental satellites looking
for scientific data. GOES is actually
operated by NOAA.We develop it here at NASA and they
are operational satellites. Janet Green: So that means that there are always two
satellites running at all times and should one of those fails,
there is even a 3rd satellite up there in storage, waiting to be turned on,
so we will never miss some space weather
event that’s going on. Launch Countdown Announcer: Zero and lift off
Narrator: On March 4th, 2010 NASA launched
the last satellite in the GOES N-O-P series.
GOES-P, now GOES-15, will ensure continuity of service
and delivery of real-time data to help predict space and
Earth-based weather more accurately.
Paul Richards: We are actually working on the replacement of those, GOES-R series,
and they are going to be lasting for 5 years of storage and 15
years on orbit.
Closing music.