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Goodrich Technology Aboard GOES-N
Charlotte NC (SPX) Jun 21, 2006 When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest spacecraft, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-N, launched last month, it carried Goodrich Corp.'s Solar X-ray Imager telescope mirror assembly. The SXI provides early detection and characterization of solar disturbances, thereby allowing NOAA and the U.S. Air Force to issue space-weather forecasts and alerts to commercial satellite operators. Solar activity can interfere with space and ground-based communication systems by degrading the performance of navigation tools such as GPS and introducing radiation that can damage space-based electronics and impact the orbit of satellites. GOES-N is the latest in a series of earth monitoring satellites. It provides continuous monitoring of both earth and space weather events. Goodrich's Electro-Optical Systems team was responsible for the design, fabrication and verification of five space-qualified telescope mirror assemblies for the SXI program. The SXI telescope has a wide field-of-view, providing high-resolution imagery over the entire solar disk including the important coronal region. The SXI has super-smooth mirror surfaces fabricated using Goodrich processes originally developed for the Chandra x-ray telescope, allowing the SXI to achieve high contrast imagery across the X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, where sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections can be observed. Goodrich's Electro-Optical Systems team, headquartered in Danbury, Conn., has a long history in the design and fabrication of highly complex X-ray telescope systems, including the first space-based imaging X-ray telescope for the Einstein (HEAO-2) observatory and the mirrors for the world's highest resolution, space-based, X-ray telescope, the Chandra X-ray observatory. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links GOES-N Goodrich Weather News at TerraDaily.com
NPOESS Findings Leave Questions Unanswered On State of US Weather Satellites
Washington DC (SPX) Jun 12, 2006The House Science Committee has heard from agencies involved in the construction of a vital U.S. weather forecasting satellite that has fallen severely behind schedule and is vastly over budget. This is not the first hearing the Committee has held on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program, and it certainly will not be the last. |
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