GOES-3: A Weather Satellite’s 38 Years, From Mount St. Helens to the South Pole

GOES-3, NOAA’s third Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. NOAA.

GOES-3 had a career few spacecraft can match: 38 years in orbit, first as a weather satellite and then as a communications link to some of the remotest places on Earth. NOAA called it one of the oldest continuously operating spacecraft in history.

A weather watcher

GOES-3 went into orbit on June 16, 1978, the third of NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, launched on a Delta rocket and placed at 135 degrees west. Its instrument, the Visible/Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer, observed clouds, surface temperatures, cloud heights and winds by day and night. The satellite spun to stay stable, so it looked at Earth less than 10 percent of the time, and its data came in only two dimensions — but it gave forecasters some of their first near real-time views of the atmosphere from a fixed point in space.

GOES-C, as GOES-3 was called before it went into service, awaiting launch. NASA.

From the "GOES-West" position it watched the weather for a decade. Its most famous images came on May 18, 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted and spread ash over Washington State; NOAA used its data and imagery to track the ash clouds and warn pilots of the danger. In 1988, ten years after launch, it lost its ability to make useful weather images.

A second career

It could still talk to the ground. That caught the attention of PEACESAT, the Pan-Pacific Education and Communications Experiments by Satellite programme, founded in 1971 and run by the University of Hawaii at Manoa to bring telecommunications to the Pacific Islands. Repositioned, GOES-3 carried healthcare, education, disaster response and other public services to the islands from 1988 into the early 1990s.

Then its orbit made it useful somewhere else. Low on fuel, the satellite had long stopped the manoeuvres that keep a geostationary orbit precisely level, and its orbit tilted more and more against the equator. That tilt let it link the polar regions directly with the United States for 6.5 hours a day — a rare ability that interested the National Science Foundation, which runs the U.S. Antarctic Program. Through a series of agreements, NOAA transferred the satellite for good, and from 1995 GOES-3 carried communications between the continental United States and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in the 2007–08 summer season, with the ceremonial South Pole and the flags of the original 12 Antarctic Treaty nations. NSF.

At the pole, satellites are the only way to reach the outside world. Operated by the University of Miami's Richmond Satellite Operations Center through a 9-metre dish at the station, GOES-3 and a few other satellites carried science data, telemedicine, and voice and data links.

The 9-metre South Pole Marisat-GOES Terminal, which communicated with GOES-3. NSF.

Curtain call

Retirement began on June 15, 2016. Over 14 days and 20 manoeuvres, controllers raised GOES-3 into a "graveyard" orbit, safely clear of working geostationary satellites. Decommissioning ended on June 29, 2016, after a service life of 38 years and 13 days, spanning five decades and six U.S. presidents.

Sources

• NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, "GOES-3: The Oldest Operating Satellite Takes Its Curtain Call"; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Images from NOAA, NASA and the National Science Foundation.