NASA SPoRT scientists use GOES satellite data extensively for research and product development. When a GOES satellite transition occurs, SPoRT scientists heavily rely on SPoRT’s Data Production team to ensure the new data is properly ingested into SPoRT’s servers with minimal impacts.

On January 4^th, 2023, NASA’s Geostationary Orbiting Environmental Satellite (GOES)-18 satellite officially became operational as GOES-West. The previous GOES-West satellite, known as GOES-17, was officially relocated in orbit, and moved into storage mode.

With over 38 years of service to NASA, Paul Meyer has led SPoRT’s Data Production team through successful transitions of ingesting new GOES satellite data into SPoRT’s servers (Figure 1).

Not only did Meyer accomplish numerous tasks such as writing code, monitoring servers, and ensuring software compatibility for each satellite transition since GOES-8, he was also responsible for recalibrating the GOES receiving stations’ dish to align to the new GOES satellite in geostationary orbit.

Back in the early 2000’s, SPoRT’s leadership advocated for GOES receiving stations to be installed in Huntsville, Alabama. This allowed NASA’s Marshall Space Flight center to obtain a direct feed of GOES rebroadcast reception and reduce product latency from 3^rd party sources. Located on the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the GOES-East receiving station was installed in 2016 and GOES-West in 2018.

Retiring in December 2022, Meyer now serves as a NASA emeritus, passing along his in-depth knowledge and responsibilities of satellite transitions to the new lead of the Data Production team Roger Allen, and team members Michael Antia and Christopher Tracy.

Meyer began preparing the Data Production team for the January 4^th, 2023, GOES-18 satellite transition nearly three months in advance. The Data Production team collaboratively strategized a plan of action to validate pipelines that work to push data from the new GOES-18 satellite into SPoRT’s servers, monitor incoming files and servers, and verify software products were compatible with the new satellite. With various tasks at hand, Data Production team’s the biggest concern were possible prolonged data and product outages.

“If the new GOES-18 satellite data wasn’t ingesting properly into SPoRT’s servers, we would have to stop everything and examine what went wrong,” says Tracy.

In addition to numerous coding, hardware, and software tasks, SPoRT’s Data Production team learned how to recalibrate the GOES-West receiving dish from Meyer.

Under Meyer’s instructions, the Data Production team learned how to align, or point, the receiving station’s 6 ½ meter diameter dish in the direction of the GOES-18 satellite in geostationary orbit. With a such a large dish at each receiving station, the team had to be precise as possible in pointing the dish to capture optimal signal from the satellite.

“It was fascinating that here, on the ground, we can connect with a satellite that is over thousands of kilometers away by recalibrating the dish to the correct azimuth and elevation,” says Antia.

With the Data Production team’s advance preparation and Meyer’s expertise from previous GOES satellite transfers, the Data Production team completed the transition of the GOES-18 satellite to GOES-West in an impressive two hours!

"It was a great experience for the team to get into the trenches and work collaboratively together in real-time," said Allen.

SPoRT is a leader in providing the public access to view near-real time imagery from GOES satellites since 2001. SPoRT’s GOES Data Viewer website received over 70 million web hits and 750,000 unique visitors in September 2013. On average, the web site receives nearly 35 million hits per month from over 200,000 sites. You can access SPoRT’s GOES Viewer here along with SPoRT data and products that use GOES satellite data here.