[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 39 (Wednesday, April 13, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 LAUNCH OF GOES-NEXT WEATHER SATELLITE

                                 ______


                           HON. RALPH M. HALL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 13, 1994

  Mr. HALL of Texas. Mr. Speaker, this morning we embarked on a new era 
of weather forecasting. This morning the geostationary operational 
environmental satellite [GOES-I] was launched on an Atlas-Centaur by 
the Air Force from Cape Canaveral, FL. After on-orbit checkout by NASA, 
the spacecraft will be turned over to the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] for operations. The GOES I-M series 
of satellites will significantly enhance our ability to continuously 
monitor and measure dynamic weather events in real time.
  The GOES-NEXT system of five new satellites, GOES I, J, K, L, and M, 
significantly upgrades and expands NOAA's capability to provide the 
data needed for more accurate short-term weather forecasts. This is 
especially true for severe local storms such as tornadoes and 
hurricanes, two meteorological events that directly affect public 
safety, the protection of property, and ultimately, economic health and 
development.
  This next-generation GOES satellite is the first 3-axis, body-
stabilized, meteorological satellite to be used by NOAA and NASA in 
geostationary orbit. This stabilization allows the primary mission 
sensors, the imager and sounder, to stare at the Earth. This provides a 
steady observational platform for the mission sensors, greatly 
increasing measurement accuracy over the present system. The capability 
to more frequently scan the Earth generates 150 percent more images 
than the current GOES satellite.
  The GOES-NEXT system also supports atmospheric sciences research and 
development into numerical weather prediction models, meteorological 
phenomena, and environmental sensors. To achieve these goals requires 
more frequent imaging of clouds, monitoring of the Earth's surface 
temperature and water vapor fields, and sounding to detect the 
atmospheric thermal and vapor structures.
  A dedicated search and rescue transponder on board GOES satellites 
immediately detects distress signals from aircraft and ships and relays 
them to ground terminals to speed help to people in need. Increased 
communications capability permits transcription of processed weather 
data and weather facsimile [WEFAX] for small local user terminals in 
the Western Hemisphere.
  The GOES I-M satellites also carry space environment monitor [SEM] 
instruments to survey the Sun and its effect on the solar-terrestrial 
electromagnetic environment. Changes in this space weather can 
significantly affect operational reliability of ionospheric radio, 
over-the-horizon radar, electric power transmission, and most 
importantly, the human crews of high altitude aircraft, the space 
shuttle and the space station.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend NASA, the Air Force, and particularly, the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on their perseverance 
in the development and launch of this new weather satellite system. I 
ask that the following newspaper article by Warren E. Leary of the New 
York Times appear in the Record for the information of my colleagues.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 12, 1994]

    New Weather Satellite To Boost Ailing Fleet With Better Imagery

                          (By Warren E. Leary)

       Washington, April 11.--The nation's teetering system of 
     weather satellites, for years held together by luck and 
     borrowed equipment, hopes to receive new vitality on 
     Wednesday with the launching of the most advanced weather 
     sentinel ever placed above Earth.
       The satellite, the first of a planned series of five that 
     are to be eyes of weather forecasters into the next century, 
     is an ambitious attempt to create a new generation of 
     instruments for predicting weather and averting natural 
     disasters.
       The spacecraft is also a chance for NASA and the country's 
     weather service agencies to prove that the vital program is 
     back on track after an embarrassing period of miscalculations 
     and foul-ups that put it years behind schedule and far over 
     budget. Program managers hope its launching, if successful, 
     together with last year's orbital repair of the Hubble Space 
     Telescope, will restore the agencies' credibility after a 
     series of space failures and assure the public that 
     expensive, high-technology projects can pay off.
       ``We need this satellite,'' said Thomas E. McGunigal, 
     program manager for the project with the National Oceanic and 
     Atmospheric Administration, the Commerce Department agency 
     that owns and operates the weather satellite system. ``We 
     need to get it up, we need to operate it, we need to show 
     people what it can do.''
       Arthur F. Obenschain, the project manager for NASA's 
     Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., which is 
     overseeing construction of the satellites, said engineers 
     have overcome all major technical problems that previously 
     plagued the program. ``All of the major components are within 
     specification and we have confidence in them,'' he said.
       The first of the next generation of spacecraft in the GOES 
     series, an acronym for Geostationary Operational 
     Environmental Satellite, is scheduled to be launched on 
     Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard an Atlas rocket.
       The new weather satellites have a radically different 
     design from their predecessors. They combine improved 
     instruments for more detailed images and more precise 
     scientific readings with a new way of stabilizing the 
     spacecraft so that its eyes always stare down at Earth.
       GOES satellites orbit Earth 22,340 miles high at positions 
     above the Equator. From this vantage point, the satellites' 
     orbits match the rotation of Earth, allowing them to hover 
     over the same position.
       Earlier GOES satellites were spun constantly to keep them 
     stable, requiring special cameras that scanned the planet in 
     small segments while looking out into space 90 percent of the 
     time, Mr. McGunigal said. The new generation maintains a 
     steady position using a system of spinning momentum wheels, 
     gyroscopes and small rockets. This allows uninterrupted 
     observations and, for the first time, the ability to focus on 
     particular storms, tornado systems and other weather spots of 
     interest.
       A second major innovation is greatly improved 
     instrumentation for taking pictures of weather patterns and 
     for measuring the heat and humidity of the atmosphere at 
     various heights. The two major instruments aboard the craft, 
     called the imager and the sounder, have been significantly 
     improved overprevious versions, and can be operated 
     simultaneously to provide better, more in-depth information, 
     engineers said. On earlier GOES satellites, the instruments 
     shared certain components that required them to be used one 
     at a time.
       The sounder monitors the infrared radiation reaching the 
     satellite from Earth's atmosphere, using this information for 
     making heat and humidity profiles at different altitudes that 
     give meteorologists an intimate picture of what is going on 
     in the air below. Instead of relying on cloud patterns alone 
     to tell them that a storm is brewing or to predict the path 
     of a disturbance, researchers say a sounder can probe clear 
     sky for a harvest of clues on incipient weather conditions.


                          Discovery in 1980's

       Scientists discovered in the early 1980's, when the first 
     experimental sounders were tested, that measuring different 
     wavelengths of infrared radiation through a column of air 
     gave them temperature and humidity readings at different 
     levels. Different wavelengths indicate the presence and 
     temperature of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases, 
     as well as their altitude.
       But scientists also realized that this information signaled 
     different atmospheric densities, which nature always tries to 
     balance by moving air from one place to the next. Armed with 
     these data, they learned to deduce the speed and direction of 
     wind currents in clear air and were able to produce valuable 
     maps of global wind flow.
       The sounder on the new spacecraft has been greatly improved 
     over previous versions, examining the atmosphere through 19 
     infrared wavelengths instead of 12 to retrieve more and 
     better information through different layers of air, Mr. 
     McGunigal said. Since this instrument works best when looking 
     through clear air, it should help forecasters better chart 
     the invisible winds that help determine the paths of 
     hurricanes and tornadoes.
       To produce pictures with better sharpness, contrast and 
     brightness, the new imaging camera is more sensitive and 
     simultaneously picks up more visible and infrared wavelengths 
     of light than its predecessors.
       GOES-8's camera will form images much faster and get more 
     detail about weather trouble spots. It can be programmed to 
     look at a particular storm system every five minutes, and 
     create an image of the contiguous 48 states every 15 minutes, 
     compared with the hour needed by current satellites. The more 
     frequent data updates should improve forecasters' ability to 
     track changes in the intensity and paths of storms. 
     Specifically, forecasters should be able to narrow the zone 
     within which a hurricane is expected to hit land.
       The new GOES satellite is larger and more than four times 
     heavier than the earlier generation craft because of its new 
     stabilization system, improved instruments and greater 
     communications ability with the ground. The main instruments 
     aboard the satellite, which weights 4,640 pounds, are housed 
     in a seven-foot-square cube from which two long booms extend. 
     A single-wing, two-panel solar power array extends 20 feet 
     from one end of the spacecraft while a 10-foot cone-shaped 
     solar sail is mounted on a 58-foot boom protruding from the 
     other side. The sail helps stabilize the craft by balancing 
     the pressure exerted by constant solar radiation.
       The United States usually maintains two weather satellites 
     in geostationary orbits, one each over the East and West 
     Coasts, and supplements their images and readings with data 
     from lower-altitude satellites that circle the planet above 
     its poles. The system began breaking down in 1989 when GOES-6 
     failed shortly after it reached its planned five-year life 
     span, leaving only GOES-7, orbited in 1987, operating. A 
     previously planned replacement satellite blew up in a 
     launching accident in 1986. As a temporary measure, the 
     United States last year borrowed an aging spare European 
     satellite, Meteosat-3.
       The program to develop new GOES satellites, an effort begun 
     in 1985 dubbed GOES-NEXT, is at least three years behind 
     schedule. Critics attribute the delay to unexpected problems 
     in developing its instruments, and poor quality control in 
     manufacturing and testing components. Some experts estimate 
     that the cost of building and launching five of the new 
     satellites by the year 2005, as planned, will total almost $2 
     billion, more than triple original estimates.
       Blame fell on Ford Aerospace, then the prime contractor, 
     and the I.T.T. Corporation's aerospace division, a major 
     subcontractor. In addition, NASA was faulted by Congressional 
     critics and others for not tightly managing the program and 
     inadequately testing system components. In 1990, the Loral 
     Corporation bought Ford Aerospace and Loral's Space Systems 
     group took over the troubled program and set about correcting 
     the deficiencies.


                            a costly mistake

       Dr. Elbert W. Friday Jr., director of the National Weather 
     Service, said the project got into trouble because weather 
     service agencies were persuaded by scientists not to be too 
     conservative in designing the new system.
       ``In retrospect, we probably should have been more hesitant 
     at stepping out so far'' into new technology, Dr. Friday 
     said. ``We had problems in manufacturing specific parts for 
     the satellites and also pushed the state of the art of some 
     of the sensors far past what people thought that state was.''
       But Dr. Friday said he was now optimistic about the new 
     series of satellites. ``We have carried out testing to the 
     extent we never had before,'' he said. ``I am now happy with 
     the performance I see.''

                          ____________________