NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration have awarded a $423 million contract to Hughes Space and Communications, El Segundo, California, for the manufacture, launch and delivery on-orbit of up to four weather-monitoring Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).
The new spacecraft will continue and enhance the functions of the current GOES I-M series of spacecraft.
The first spacecraft purchased under this contract will be ready for launch in October 2001. GOES N-Q will carry an imager and a sounder to provide regular measurements of Earth's atmosphere, cloud cover, and land surfaces. Two of them will also carry a Solar X-ray imager and space environment monitor instruments.
On 12Z Monday 2 February, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) implemented changes on the early Eta model. With these changes, the resolution of the Eta forecast model will be increased from 48 km/38 levels to 32 km/45 levels with little change in the size of the horizontal domain. The Eta optimum interpolation analysis is being replaced with a 3 dimensional variational analysis (3DVAR) designed for use in the Eta Data Assimilation System (EDAS) and is used to initialize the early Eta forecast. The EDAS is being modified to run in partial cycling mode. With partial cycling, soil parameters (temperature and moisture), turbulent Kinetic Energy, and cloud water (ice) are obtained at the start of each EDAS cycle from the previous EDAS cycle. Accompanying the change is an increase in the number of soil layers in the eta model land/surface package from two to four. The computation of the master length scale for vertical turbulent transport is also modified. A new 32 kilometer lambert conformal grid (AWIPS grid 221) will be output which covers nearly the entire computational domain. Further details on this implementation can be found at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/447.htm.
