Monitoring Earth’s environment from space
A new satellite will soon be able to track extreme weather from more than 20,000 miles above Earth.
NOAA and NASA have joined forces to launch an advanced weather satellite. This satellite is the final in a series from NOAA. The Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite or GOES-U will help forecasters better understand and prepare for Earth’s biggest environmental threats.
GOES-U has a targeted launch date set in April of this year. The satellite will study climate data and monitor Earth’s most destructive environmental phenomenon – like wildfires, volcanoes, and hurricanes.
Ryan Page, an engineer with Lockheed Martin, said the images will have the potential to change the way we view the Earth’s climate.
“These images, you see are a combination of just the incredible amount of sensing that some of these payloads can do,” Page said. “I mean, you're talking about an advanced baseline imager, which is really the big payload on our vehicle.”
Aside from Earth’s own environmental disasters, Page said the satellite can also track other factors that could impact the Earth.
“You can see actually asteroids entering Earth's atmosphere,” Page said. “So you can actually track meteors with this too. So, like just an unbelievable amount of data that we're still figuring it out.”
How close we are to stepping foot on Mars
Just how close are we to putting humans on Mars? That was a question posed by the hosts of the podcast Walkabout the Galaxy: Josh Colwell, Audrey Martin and Jim Cooney. Earlier this month, our host Brendan Byrne joined that show for a live taping from the MegaCon 2024 Orlando convention floor.
Colwell said the movement to land humans on Mars will be a unifying event, similar to some of the moon missions that work with different nations.
“There are some ancillary benefits, non-scientific benefits to everybody coming together to do something that is too challenging for any one entity, even NASA to do on their own,” Colwell said. “We're talking about when will we walk on Mars? You know, there have been a couple of like projects for sending people to Mars permanently.”
