WASHINGTON -- When the GOES-R weather satellite is launched in 2015, the more detailed data it is expected to produce could reduce costly hurricane evacuations that plague U.S. coastlines along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic, industry officials bidding to work on the project say.

 

The next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), a joint project of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will provide more detailed data that could allow forecasters to narrow the cone of uncertainty they now use when determining where a hurricane might strike, said Mike Ruggles, GOES-R program director for Raytheon, one of two companies vying for the GOES-R ground segment contract.

 

"There's a rule of thumb that it costs $1 million per mile to evacuate, with areas that have a higher population density having a higher cost per mile," Ruggles said. "With a better knowledge and better ability to predict, we can narrow in those error bars and evacuate less coastline."

 

NOAA is reviewing bids submitted in July by Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., and Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., to conduct ground processing of the data from Suitland, Md., Wallops Island, Va., and a backup facility in West Virginia. The agency expects to reach a decision in March 2009, said NOAA spokesman John Leslie.

 

NASA is set to select the contractor to build two satellites, with an option for two more, in December, he said. Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems of Seal Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Sunnyvale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman Space Technology of Redondo Beach, Calif., submitted bids in March to build the satellites.

 

Congress still must approve funding for GOES-R, but a presidential election-year logjam on budget bills could postpone funding for the new budget year that begins Oct. 1 until after the new president is sworn in Jan. 20. That could delay the program start and raises the possibility of a gap in coverage between existing spacecraft and GOES-R.

 

GOES-R's Advanced Baseline Imager will help forecasters by taking images of any given area every five minutes, compared with every 30 minutes by the current generation of satellites, and will cut spatial resolution from 1 kilometer to half of a kilometer. The imager, being built by ITT Corp. of White Plains, N.Y., has 16 spectral bands compared with five on the current generation GOES satellites.

 

"GOES-R will double the spatial resolution and take images six times more often," said Allan Weiner, GOES-R program chief scientist for Harris Corp. "With more spectral channels we can see more and different types of clouds and tell the structure of the clouds."

 

Absent from GOES-R is the Hyperspectral Environmental Suite, a sounding instrument that was removed from the program in August 2006 when the budget swelled to $11 billion. The instrument would have improved quality of the sounding data such as atmospheric temperature and humidity. Without it, GOES-R will produce data of the same quality currently produced, although the information will be delivered more quickly, Weiner said.

 

"The capability is not being lost for doing soundings," he said. "The current sounder takes one hour for continental United States; GOES-R can do hemispheric in 15 minutes. We gave up the improved quality for various reasons but will still have improved frequency."

 

Ruggles said GOES-R will have an improved ability to measure sea surface temperatures. Hurricanes intensify over warmer water, and even a few degrees can make a difference. As Hurricane Gustav approached New Orleans in late August, for example, the water temperature was slightly cooler in the coastal waters than it was in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which forecasters accurately predicted would slow Gustav's intensity.

 

"Below 84 degrees, intensity drops off," Ruggles said. "It's critical to get those sea surface temperatures."

 

GOES-R, like its predecessors, will have the ability to scan a specific area every 30 seconds to monitor severe storms. In existing GOES satellites, however, scanning for other customers stops while the scanner zeroes in on its target. 

 

By contrast GOES-R will allow simultaneous activation of the 30-second data collection while continuing with normal functions, Weiner said.

 

"Once a decision is made, it will take less than a couple minutes to produce," he said. "The human process is up to NOAA."

 

Harris and Raytheon have created software they say is capable of keeping pace with the satellite's ability to produce images more quickly.

 

"What's new on the ground is directly tied to the capability of the new sensor," Ruggles said. "Data will come in 90 times faster. We have to process that in one-sixth the amount of time they have to process today."

 

In addition to severe weather forecasting, the data can be used to forecast crop growth and plan for water shortages and dam releases, and measure sea surface temperatures to help with commercial fisheries management, Weiner said.

 

The companies say the new satellite will increase the data products, or applications for the data, from about 40 to between 100 and 130.