Post #343

As time GOES by. 🛰 A little more than 22,000 miles (34,000 kilometers) above Earth, the newest NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) has released its first photos. Locked in a geostationary orbit, GOES-18 covers the same section of Earth – over the western contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America and the Pacific Ocean. The GOES satellites are the most advanced weather-monitoring satellites in the Western Hemisphere; they provide high-resolution imagery, atmospheric measurements, and lightning maps of our home planet, all in real-time, and monitor space weather with enhanced solar imaging and an upgraded magnetometer - which measures magnetic field variations. GOES-18 will help meteorologists and scientists monitor storms, wildfires, hurricanes, and climate change. ⁣ Credit: NOAA/NASA