Preparing for the Advanced Baseline Imager on the GOES-R series

The next generation geostationary satellite series will offer a continuation of current products and services and enable improved and new capabilities. This will not only provide continuity of services, but allow many new uses of the imager information. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)-R series will address a wide range of phenomena. As with the current GOES Imager, the ABI will be used for a wide range of operational uses. The ABI will improve upon the current GOES Imager with more spectral bands, faster imaging, higher spatial resolution, better navigation, and more accurate calibration. The ABI expands from five spectral bands on the current GOES imagers to a total of 16 spectral bands in the visible, near-infrared and infrared spectral regions. There will be an increase of the coverage rate leading to full disk scans to at least every 15 minutes and continental US (CONUS) scans every 5 minutes. ABI spatial resolution will be nominally 2 km for the infrared bands and 0.5 km for the 0.64 um visible band. The improvement over the current imager with respect to number of spectral bands, spatial resolutions and coverage are factors of 3, 4 and 5, respectively. A key post-launch task will be the on-orbit science check-out, after the engineering check-out.