What kinds of information is the GOES-R satellite going to collect
In a massive clean room in the center of Denver, a giant satellite sits dormant, waiting for its journey into orbit. Engineers with Lockheed Martin's Space division move around its hulking trunk, indistinguishable from one another in their face masks and full-torso protective suits.
They perch over the spacecraft on a large forklift, taking laser-guided measurements. They shuffle underneath the satellite'due south belly, triple-checking the position of wires and instruments. They lean up close to its mammoth argent facade, delicately adjusting tiny components past equally piddling every bit one-thousandth of an inch. It's like watching dozens of Mike Teavees, shrunk down and moving around the inner workings of a Wonkavision TV set.
I've been Wonkafied myself -- gaffer-taped into a white make clean suit, consummate with clip-on booties, two masks and, hilariously, an orange hairnet that tells everyone I'grand from overseas. (Getting access to Lockheed facilities, including this clean room, requires a full security credentialing process. U.s.a. citizens are dressed in all white, but foreign nationals, including Australians like me, need to be easily identifiable while on-site. I don't mind the extra flair -- after all, ane does want a hint of colour.)
I've been given rare access to see the GOES-T, a massive weather satellite Lockheed Martin Infinite is building for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. The satellite is destined to enter geostationary orbit, a bit more 22,000 miles above Earth's surface, and collect huge amounts of data about weather hither on Earth and in space.
The GOES-T satellite inside the clean room at Lockheed Martin Space headquarters.
John Kim/CNET"We're getting 30 times the information down on this satellite every bit they did on the previous satellites," says GOES-T's deputy plan manager, Alreen Knaub. "We're doing space weather condition, sunday weather and Earth weather."
After its launch, scheduled for February 2022, the satellite will track meteorological events in precise detail, mapping lightning strikes, following fire lines and tracking extreme weather in existent time. All this information beamed down from space could potentially be life-saving, helping scientists and meteorologists better predict natural disasters and protect all of us here on the ground.
You can't be too careful when it comes to edifice a spacecraft and preparing it for launch. From the initial fabrication of the excursion boards inside the satellite to the concluding testing, the team at Lockheed Martin Space is concerned with precision at every stage of the build. This isn't "measure twice, and then cut once." This is measure countless times with lasers, reposition, measure again, repeatedly torture test, show it to the lady in the orange hairnet, and then have your one chance for launch.
After all, this isn't your standard piece of electronic hardware. If a satellite breaks down, it'southward virtually impossible to get information technology repaired 22,000 miles above the Earth.
Engineers get up shut to the silver thermal reflectors on the GOES-T's surface, which are designed to reflect the sun's radiation in space.
John Kim/CNETLife-saving data
The GOES-T is the third satellite in a family unit of four Geostationary Operational Ecology Satellites used by NOAA to rail atmospheric condition from orbit. Existence geostationary satellites, these spacecraft are designed to stay in a fixed orbit in fourth dimension with the Earth'south rotation. GOES-T is set up to stay stationed above Northward and Due south America, bringing in information for the Western Hemisphere.
(A annotation on naming: The grouping of satellites is known every bit the GOES-R family unit. Each satellite has an alphabetical proper noun here on Earth earlier existence assigned a number in space. The GOES-R and GOES-Southward satellites launched in 2016 and 2018, respectively, and are now known as GOES-16 and GOES-17. After information technology launches, GOES-T will become GOES-18. The final GOES-U satellite is still in the early on build stages and is expected to launch in 2024. And so it'south still a few years earlier it really GOES, and so to speak.)
The GOES-T'southward solar array.
John Kim/CNETGOES-T has instruments to track space and dominicus weather activity like solar flares, changes in the magnetosphere and radiations hazards. All have the ability to affect non only the planet'south weather, but also electronics and communications equipment here on World, and in the International Space Station. In fact, ane of the tasks of the GOES satellites is to provide warnings to astronauts on the ISS about incoming solar activity that could affect their operations or interfere with their instruments.
Imagery taken from the GOES-16 (GOES-T's predecessor) showing Hurricane Ida approaching the coast of Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2021.
NOAAThe GOES-T is besides packed with instruments for tracking Earth conditions, like the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, which can map lightning all over the world, and the Avant-garde Baseline Imager, which takes images of the clouds, atmosphere and surface of Earth.
"We can non only runway forest fires; the Advanced Baseline Imager can measure their oestrus signature, so we can come across if they're intensifying," says Knaub. "So when y'all meet the fire threat going upward, often that'south based on information from this satellite. ... It'south a great tool in predicting wood fires, managing forest fires and knowing where to transport the firefighters."
Information technology's this kind of data that has a huge impact on our 24-hour interval-to-day lives, fifty-fifty if we don't realize it. During emergencies like Hurricane Ida, which battered the Gulf Coast over the past summer, the information brought downwardly from GOES satellites was life-saving.
"[Hurricane Ida] was a Category 2, and they knew based on the thermal picture of the Gulf that it was going to quickly intensify into a Category 4 once it hit that Gulf weather," says Knaub. "And so nosotros were inside ii hours of predicting when it would hit state mass, and within just a few miles of where we said it was going, 60 hours out. Which is unheard of."
From little things, large things grow
Accurateness in the sky starts with accuracy on the footing, and for the team at Lockheed Martin Space, that begins with the tiny components that ability the satellite.
Beyond the road from the clean room, I'm given a sky-blue lab coat and shown effectually Lockheed's Space Electronics Center. This is where electrical engineers manufacture, assemble and solder the excursion boards, modules and boxes for the spacecraft.
"We focus on ability and avionics, which is going to be the life and the brains of a satellite," says Angelo Trujillo, one of the engineering science aide specialists at the SEC.
Spools of tiny circuit board components await to exist dispensed past one of the automated machines in Lockheed Martin's Infinite Electronics Center.
John Kim/CNETThough many of these components were once soldered by paw, much of the fabrication is now washed with the help of automation. Walking effectually the SEC lab, I see machines programmed to solder circuitry, and robotic arms whir as they lay down components on circuit boards. Gone are the electrical engineers identifying tiny resistors based on their color-coded stripes -- instead, long spools of plastic-sealed components are wound up like pic reels, ready to be loaded into the machines for automated associates.
"Information technology's a lot better for proficiency and efficiency; we get the same results every fourth dimension," Trujillo tells me. "Where hand-soldering information technology would accept a lot longer. What nosotros tin exercise in an hour, it would take a week or ii to attempt and manus-solder."
(Automation doesn't just salve time, it besides helps avert costly failures. Lockheed Martin declined to reveal how much the GOES-T cost to build, only the entire GOES-R program has a budget of $10.8 billion.)
After they leave the SEC, the electronics and excursion boards come together with other components in an assembly procedure that sounds like a giant game of Lego, albeit with much higher stakes.
Components on the GOES-T satellite remain covered correct up until launch to protect the sensitive instruments inside.
John Kim/CNET"[The GOES-T] really starts out equally a bunch of piece parts, and the piece parts are assembled into boxes, and and so the boxes go what they call subsystems," says Knaub. "So merely like your house has an air conditioner, a heater, this satellite has the same matter. It has a ability system. It has a thermal system. Information technology has a guidance and navigation control system. And all that gets put together. ... It really is complex."
Before they're all assembled into the final satellite, each of these systems and components has to be torture-tested to ensure it can survive in orbit. The thought is to work out the kinks on Earth so they don't turn upwardly every bit problems in space.
The components are subjected to vibration testing that simulates the shaking of a rocket launch (the last thing you want is a satellite that breaks before it'south even reached space). Then they're tested to come across if they'll withstand the wild temperature fluctuations they'll experience in orbit.
For that, Lockheed has its own infinite simulator of sorts: a vacuum-sealed tube, well-nigh the size of a pocket-sized machine, known every bit a thermal vacuum chamber. Components are placed within this TVAC unit, the door is sealed, and and then engineers draw it down to a vacuum before running through a cycle of hot and common cold temperatures.
Then, when those components are built into the satellite, all that testing happens again: mechanical environment tests to simulate launch, more thermal vacuum testing and, of course, precision testing of communications equipment.
"We actually smash it with electronic electromagnetic waves to make sure it sees all the possible interference it could see," says Knaub. "You know how you become static on your radio? You don't want that coming across in the spacecraft."
Centre in the sky
After launching, the GOES-T satellite will stay in geosynchronous orbit over Due north and South America.
Lockheed Martin SpaceOne time the GOES-T aces its tests, information technology'll nail off from Space Launch Complex-41 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an Atlas V rocket. Information technology'll jolt through the atmosphere to join a swarm of more than than 3,000 other satellites zooming around in orbit. And then information technology'll agree its position directly in a higher place the Americas, hopefully for years, sending scientific information dorsum to Earth.
If the GOES-T satellite is successful in its mission, it'll undoubtedly save lives, bringing in more weather data in less time and helping officials predict the path and intensity of extreme weather condition events similar hurricanes and wildfires.
But chances are almost of u.s. won't actually know it's in that location. Information technology'll quietly beam downward data that nosotros ultimately see on weather apps, or in updates on the evening news. It'll become 1 of the thousands of human-made sentinels orbiting our planet, 24 hours a day, helping us stay continued and alive.
Source: https://www.cnet.com/science/inside-the-clean-room-how-lockheed-martin-is-building-tomorrows-satellites/
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