GOES Satellite Constellation: Status, Challenges, Successes

The GOES-R satellite series has now replaced the legacy GOES-East and GOES-West satellites. The technological advances of the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) are already providing life saving benefits and allowing forecasters in observation limited areas the ability to see things at a time cadence and resolution as never before with the legacy series. Unfortunately, the loop heat pipe cooling system for the GOES-17 (GOES-West) satellite experienced an issue during post-launch checkout, which has resulted in image saturation for certain portions of the year. An investigation concluded the most likely cause of the thermal performance issue is foreign object debris blocking the flow of the coolant in the loop heat pipes. A great deal of progress has been made to optimize the performance of the GOES-17 data and the instrument is currently delivering 97% of the data it was intended to provide. Communicating this complex issue has required a great deal of coordination, repetition, and evolution.

This presentation will describe the current operating status of the GOES constellation, including how performance of the GOES-17 ABI has been optimized and the communication challenges associated with it. In addition, we will review the validation maturity for the GOES-17 portfolio, and finally highlight mesoscale domain sector (MDS) research successes since the last NWA conference.