Search

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with the aid of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is procuring the next generation of geostationary weather satellites. This book assesses progress on program schedule, cost, and functionality; assesses efforts to identify and address issues discovered during integration and testing; and evaluates the likelihood of a gap in satellite coverage and actions to prevent or mitigate such a gap. This book also evaluates NOAA's progress on the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellite program with respect to cost, schedule, and mitigation of key risks; identifies the benefits and challenges of alternatives for polar satellite gap mitigation; and assesses NOAA's efforts to establish and implement a comprehensive contingency plan for potential gaps in polar satellite data.

This book provides an overview of The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R(GOES-R) programs, which are meant to replace current operational satellites. Both are considered critical to the United States'ability to maintain the continuity of data required for weather forecasting. Since the 1960s, the United States has used both polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites to observe the earth and its land, oceans, atmosphere, and space environments. Polar-orbiting satellites constantly circle the earth in an almost north-south orbit, providing global coverage of conditions that affect the weather and climate. As the earth rotates beneath it, each polar-orbiting satellite views the entire earth's surface twice a day. In contrast, geostationary satellites maintain a fixed position relative to the earth from a high orbit of about 22,300 miles in space. Both types of satellites provide a valuable perspective of the environment and allow observations in areas that may be otherwise unreachable.

Operational geostationary environmental satellites play a critical role in our nation's weather forecasting. These satellites - which are managed by the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - provide critical information on atmospheric, oceanic, climatic, and solar conditions that help meteorologists observe and predict global and local weather events. They also provide a means to identify severe storm conditions, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, and to track the movement and intensity of these storms once they develop. This book examines the status of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) acquisition; with a focus on the improvements needed in continuity planning and involvement of key users.