So You Want to Build A Weather Satellite?

1:48


Say you’ve been observing Earth’s weather using GOES satellites for the past 40 years, and suddenly, you realize you need to launch another satellite to keep doing it because it’s really important. Naturally, you might think to yourself: Great! Let’s just box up parts from the previous satellites, launch them into space, and let them do their thing.

	
Unfortunately, that’s just not how it works. Scientists and engineers are always looking for better ways to improve the weather forecast, and for them, images like this (show the first TIROS/GOES image ever recorded) from decades old satellites just aren’t quite up to snuff. Thankfully, scientists and engineers HAVE been busy working with meteorologists to improve things, so they have an idea of what data is needed. next.. That way, when they launch a new satellite, they’re adding to what they’ve learned before, which means even better weather forecasts for the rest of us.

	
So, when you build a satellite in NOAA’s new GOES series, called GOES-R, it naturally sets off a flurry of activity. Because they always want to improve things, engineers might change the satellite platform, upgrade all the instruments, and because it’s meant to improve the forecast, add something totally new that’s never been done before – like a new lightning mapper. After months of constructive debates and more than a few late nights, they’ll finally come to an agreement.

	
Once everything’s been approved, the engineers get to design and put everything together. However, even though they’ve built GOES satellites before, it’s not just a matter of pulling out the old designs and bolting everything together. Because there’s new science to be done, things have to be re-designed, modified, upgraded, built, tested, re-tested, tested some more, and finally delivered, so that at the end of the day, it all fits neatly atop a giant rocket.

	
Once all that’s finished, the satellite launches into space, the scientists and engineers celebrate, and lots of new data starts coming in that improves the weather forecasts for us here on Earth.