SpaceX launches the NOAA GOES-U satellite in a Falcon Heavy mission on June 25. Photo: SpaceX

The GOES-U weather satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is on its way to its final orbital position after a Tuesday SpaceX launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket. This satellite will provide data for weather forecasting, severe storm tracking, and climate monitoring. 

SpaceX launched the satellite on a Falcon Heavy rocket on July 25 at 5:25 p.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission managers confirmed after the launch that the spacecraft’s solar arrays successfully deployed, and the spacecraft is operating on its own power.

GOES-U, built by Lockheed Martin, is the final satellite in NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) — R series of four satellites. This satellite will provide weather imagery, atmospheric measurements, real-time mapping of lightning activity, and critical space weather observations over most of North America, including the contiguous United States and Mexico, as well as Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west coast of Africa.

The satellite will take about two weeks to reach Geostationary Orbit (GEO). Once it reaches orbit, it will be renamed GOES-19. 

“GOES is one of the most valuable tools that our meteorologists and hydrologists have in their observational toolbox,” said NOAA National Weather Service Director Ken Graham. “This satellite will add to the current imaging capabilities for hurricanes, fires, severe storms and other life-saving applications, including the new coronagraph that will expand warning lead times for geomagnetic storms.”