Usradioguy Blogs

NOAA’s GOES-18 is now GOES West

Earth from Orbit: NOAA’s GOES-18 is now GOES West January 4, 2023 NOAA Press Release: NOAA’s operational satellite fleet has a new member. GOES-18 entered service as GOES West on Jan. 4, 2023. The milestone comes after a Mar. 1, 2022, launch and post-launch testing of the satellite’s instruments, systems, and data. GOES-18 replaces GOES-17 as GOES […]

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Adios GOES-17

GOES-17, is soon to be headed off into the sunrise, that is, it will begin drifting to its new, on-orbit storage location east of its current 137.3°W to 104.7°W as GOES-18 Takes over on January 4th, 2023 On January 4th GOES-18 will step up and become the GOES-West geostationary satellite covering the Pacific and Western […]

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Satellite Orbiting Earth

Himawari-8 to Himawari-9 Transition

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) will switch operations from Himawari-8 to Himawari-9 on 13 December at 05:00 UTC Himawari 9 has been in space in on-orbit storage since 2016, Happily waiting for its chance to become the primary Satellite, taking over from Himawari-8. Same tech, identical satellites, same AHI sensors, etc. Now is the time […]

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NOAA-15 AVHRR Issues

Updated 08/28/2023 Looks like NOAA 15 AVHRR scan motor is heating up again, Causing some issues with scanning and affecting the APT and HRPT Imagery: What follows below is an article from October 2022 NOAA-15 AVHRR degraded image data. Starting on October 18th, 2022, NOAA-15 suffered an issue with its AVHRR Scan Motor. This is […]

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NOAA 15

NOAA 15,18,19 to transition to private On-orbit operations

NOAA Awards Parsons Team $16 Million Contract For Polar Operational Environmental Satellites Operations October 19, 2022 CENTREVILLE, Va., Oct. 19, 2022 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has selected a team led by Parsons Corporation to provide engineering services, information technology functionality, and flight operations support to assume on-orbit operations for the Polar […]

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Groups that focus on Weather Sat Reception

There are quite a bit of us hobbyists out there on the planet (See the map of hobbyists here!), that focus on and share techniques, images, software, guides etc. If you’re interested in learning about or sharing what you know, here’s a list to get you started with groups! Geo-Stationary Weather Satellite Group on Facebook […]

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False Color Imagery

GOES, Himawari, Meteosat, FENGYUN, Elecktro and other Satellites don’t “see” in color, they all basically “see” in various greyscale IR bands, There are two visible bands, blue and red. These two wavelengths are named relative to their location on the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. While these visible images would appear in blue and […]

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Software and Coding for Post Processing of Imagery

Receiving satellite imagery all by itself is interesting science and, for many of us a great hobby. Setting up your satellite receiving station, whether for GOES-R series satellites, or Himawari, FY2 or FY4, GEO-KOMPSAT-2A, Elektro-L series and others, getting the images is, in my opinion, just the start! Like NOAA, EUMETSAT, ROSCOSMOS, KMA, and other […]

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Going Green, and to Extremes!

Going Green, and to Extremes! Sometimes, you just have to share, and this really deserves to be seen! This is Manuel Lausmann’s (DO3MLA) very impressive remote, solar AND wind-powered satellite ground receiving station. Located in North Norway Sør-Helgeland ( JP65EQ) in the Manuel has built a self-powered APT/LRPT and weather station powered by a 24 […]

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GOES-18 HRIT- First Light Imagery

GOES-18 HRIT- First Light Imagery As planned, GOES-18 completed its slow drift after its first phase of post-launch testing (PLT). Arriving at 136.8° West, GOES-18 is in position for its second round of PLT’s. GOES-18, which launched on March 1, 2022, was initially delivered to 89.5 degrees west over the Central U.S. and began post-launch […]

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