The third generation of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R Series) will provide a burst of new data in the next decade unlike anything seen before in the history of earth observations. With the first launch, currently planned for 2012, this new GOES will be a sophisticated series of satellites that will monitor the Earth's environment with vastly improved spatial, spectral and temporal resolution.

The GOES-R series will scan the Earth nearly five times faster than the current GOES. The satellites will provide the user communities, including the general public, television meteorologists, private weather companies, the aviation and agricultural communities, oceanographers, hydrologists, climatologists, and national and international government agencies with about 50 times the amount of data currently provided.

GOES are a mainstay of weather forecasts and environmental monitoring in the United States. Their images of the clouds are seen daily on television weather forecasts. The next generation GOES will provide critical atmospheric, hydrologic, oceanic, climatic, solar, and space data. The satellites will host an advanced imager, a lightning mapper, a solar imager, a space environment monitor, and a hyperspectral environmental suite that performs the functions of near full disk atmospheric sounding, mesoscale atmospheric sounding, and high-resolution coastal waters imaging.

The new sensors will allow for a host of new environmental products and services, while improving all the products and services that are currently provided. The new observations will contribute to dramatically improved weather, water and space environmental services in the next decades, enhancing public safety and providing economic benefits to the U.S. and our international partners.