The US space agency NASA, in collaboration with the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Administration, launched the new GOES-U satellite into space aboard the SPICEx Falcon Heavy rocket from the Cap Canaveral base in Florida.
The launch aims to monitor hurricanes and fires on the planet until the 1930s and is expected to significantly improve the ability to anticipate solar storms that could disrupt the world’s electricity and communications systems.
The Moon carries a coronagrave called “CC or R-1” (CCOR-1), which obscures the Sun’s disk, as in the eclipse, enabling monitoring of the solar corona or so-called “corona”.
The new tool will enable the United States for the first time to monitor the solar corona almost continuously, through eclipse-like images every 30 minutes.
This represents a significant improvement over previously available capabilities; The results of this observation are subject to a delay of about eight hours, provided by a satellite launched in 1995, but expected to be out of serv
ice within two years.
GOES-U is the last of a series of four satellites, to be placed in geostationary orbit, about 35 thousand kilometres above Earth, and will be operational after tests lasting a few months.
Source: Qatar News Agency