Boeing-built GOES-15 Weather Satellite Enters Service for NASA, NOAA

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Sept. 1, 2010 — Boeing [NYSE: BA] today announced that GOES-15, the company’s eighth Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, has completed on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“GOES-15 completes the fleet of advanced meteorological satellites that Boeing designed, built and launched to provide enhanced weather monitoring over North America and refresh NOAA’s operational fleet,” said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems. “The United States will have state-of-the-art satellite images on nightly weather telecasts, better weather monitoring and prediction, and more accurate data for climate studies because of these new GOES satellites. We thank our NASA and NOAA customers for the nearly 13 successful years of cooperative development that has enabled us to deliver the full GOES fleet.”

“Clearly, this is a great day for NASA, NOAA and all of our team members,” said André Dress, GOES deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “We take great pride in knowing that all the years of hard work, late hours and diligence have paid off. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ITT and United Launch Alliance have really shone on this mission, and it shows in the final product. GOES-15 will be a great addition to the constellation, and we look forward to seeing it in operation.”
GOES-15 was launched on March 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The satellite successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 has already started to deliver high-resolution photos from space, including the first visible and infrared images of Earth taken by its imager instrument, and the first image of the sun taken by its solar X-ray imager instrument.

The eight GOES satellites that Boeing has built for NASA and NOAA began with GOES-D, which launched in 1980. The on-orbit GOES constellation includes the three recently produced Boeing satellites known as GOES-13 (formerly GOES-N), GOES-14 (formerly GOES-O) and GOES-15 (formerly GOES-P). GOES-13 was activated as the operational GOES-East satellite on April 14, in time to monitor the 2010 hurricane season over the Atlantic Ocean. GOES-13 replaced GOES-12, which NOAA moved to 60 degrees west longitude to provide coverage for South America as part of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems. GOES-14 is currently in a storage orbit of 105 degrees west longitude, ready to become a primary operational satellite in the next two years. GOES-15 will be placed in an on-orbit storage location at 105 degrees west longitude.

The mission of the GOES satellites is to provide space-based Earth observation and global environment-sensing activities, delivering enhanced weather forecasting that protects life and property. In addition to providing the familiar weather images seen on television newscasts every day, NASA and NOAA also recently released a six-minute video of the 2009 hurricane season. The video includes data and images supplied by the GOES satellites.
In addition to the acceptance of GOES-15, Boeing also handed over a government satellite to the U.S. Air Force on Aug. 26. The delivery of two operational satellites to two customers in the same week marks only the second time this has occurred in Space & Intelligence Systems’ 47-year history, underscoring Boeing’s commitment to solid program execution.

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $34 billion business with 68,000 employees worldwide.