On behalf of NOAA, NASA has awarded the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) Solar Wind Plasma Sensor (SWiPS) contract to South West Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas.
In the world of fisheries observations, satellites have completely changed the game. With their eyes in the sky, these super-high-tech spacecraft provide marine biologists, fishery managers and coastal habitat planners with vital scientific data that would be impossible to obtain from the surface alone.
NOAA maintains a fleet of satellites to monitor Earth’s weather, environment and climate. These satellites provide essential data that feed forecasts and warn us of severe weather and environmental hazards. There are two primary types of satellites used for weather forecasts: geostationary and polar-orbiting.
Animation depicting polar and geostationary satellite orbits. Credit: NOAA.
On behalf of NOAA, NASA has awarded a delivery order under the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition III (Rapid III) contract to Ball Aerospace & Technologies of Boulder, Colorado, for the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.
As we move through the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season, you will no doubt hear a lot about the Saharan Air Layer—a mass of very dry, dusty air that forms over the Sahara Desert during the late spring, summer and early fall.
The powerful hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900, killing an estimated 8,000 people and destroying more than 3,600 buildings, took the coastal city by surprise.
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Ranking Member Frank Lucas released a statement praising the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for significantly reducing expenses in a key satellite observation program. The data, released on June 18, showed a decrease of $735 million for the program’s life-cycle costs.
The incredible 2005 Atlantic hurricane season smashed many long-standing records. Some of the words used to describe it included, “historical,” “unprecedented,” and “record-breaking.”
Hurricane forecast models got an upgrade this year, thanks to new satellite data. For the first time, GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-17 (GOES-West) data are being fed into NOAA’s Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) computer model used to forecast the track and intensity of tropical cyclones.
