GOES-R

Harris has completed the final two tests of the ground segment of the geostationary operational environmental satellite, R Series (GOES-R).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of US will be able to use the ground system in preparation to launch the satellite in March 2016.

The ground segment includes 2,100 servers, 149 racks of network equipment, 317 workstations and storage services totalling three petabytes. It also has 454 blade servers for processing and distributing data.

The tests were designed to evaluate the capability of GOES-R Series to generate weather products at all operational sites.

As part of the tests, Harris completed interface testing of GOES-R with the National Weather Service’s (NWS) advanced weather interactive processing system, as well as assessed its ability to send images processed by the ground system.

"With the ground system installed and tested well in advance of launch, NOAA has time to prepare for this transformational change in weather intelligence."

Harris government communications systems, global weather solution programmes vice-president Romy Olaisen said: "GOES-R will enable major improvements in weather forecasting that will add tremendous capability for a Weather-Ready Nation.

"With the ground system installed and tested well in advance of launch, NOAA has time to prepare for this transformational change in weather intelligence.

"Our role now transitions to operational support and system enhancements, through launch and beyond."

Said to be the first of the series, the GOES-R satellite will detect and track hurricanes and other severe weather in the Western Hemisphere.

According to Harris, the ground system is designed to process and distribute data to the NWS and to over 10,000 other direct users as well as provide command and control of the constellation of satellites and their instruments.

Image: GOES-R satellite is planned for launch in March 2016. Photo: courtesy of Lockheed Martin Corporation.