UPDATE, October 5, 2016:  Updated with comments from NOAA about the potential impact of Hurricane Matthew on the GOES-R satellite, which is in Florida where hurricane warnings are in effect.

ORIGINAL STORY, October 4, 2016: The first of NOAA’s new geostationary weather satellite series, GOES-R, is ready for launch on November 4 the agency announced today.  GOES-R is used as shorthand for what is actually a set of four virtually identical satellites to be launched over the next several years.  They will receive number designations once in orbit; this will be GOES-16. The satellite incorporates an apogee kick motor to propel it from a transfer orbit to its final destination above the equator.  Two such motors failed recently, but NOAA is not concerned.  It has a backup system should the motor not perform as planned.  Of more immediate concern may be the safety of the satellite from Hurricane Matthew, which is bearing down on Florida where GOES-R is awaiting launch.

Steve Volz, NOAA Assistant Administrator for Satellites and Information Services (NESDIS) lauded the satellite’s capabilities at a press conference today, saying they are a “quantum leap” beyond the GOES satellites currently on orbit — GOES-13, -14 and -15.   He likened it to the difference between black and white television of yesteryear and ultra high definition television of today.

NOAA maintains two operational geostationary weather satellites plus a spare in addition to its polar-orbiting fleet.  One geostationary satellite covers the eastern part of the United States and surrounding waters (GOES-East) while another covers the western region (GOES-West).  The spare is situated between them, ready to take over if one fails.  Currently GOES-13 is GOES-East and GOES-15 is GOES-West.  GOES-14 is the spare.

GOES-R will be launched on November 4 at 5:40 pm ET from Cape Canaveral, FL on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.  The launch window is two hours.  If the apogee kick motor operates as expected it will take two weeks for the satellite to raise its orbit to its geostationary destination, followed by a 12-month checkout period.   NOAA will determine after checkout whether it will be placed in the East or West position. The satellite has sufficient fuel to last for 20 years, but nominally will be used operationally for 10 years and as a spare for 5 years.

The apogee kick motor, used to circularize the satellite’s orbit at the proper altitude, is similar to those used on the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System-5 (MUOS-5) satellite, the Intelsat 33e communications satellite, and the Air Force’s Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Satellite-3 (SBIRS GEO-3).  One of these motors failed on MUOS-5, which was launched on June 24.  The malfunction stranded the satellite in a useless orbit.   Another motor failed on Intelsat 33e, launched on August 24, but that satellite is capable of using another on-board propulsion system (for stationkeeping) to raise the orbit; it is expected to reach its correct position in December.  Last month, the Air Force decided to delay the launch of SBIRS GEO-3 to ensure its apogee motor is functional.

NOAA’s GOES-R program manager Greg Mandt said that NOAA is not concerned about the GOES-R apogee motor.  First, he credited NASA, which serves as NOAA’s procurement agent for satellites, with having the foresight to ensure there are no single point failures.  If the apogee motor fails, the satellite can use its stationkeeping engines to reach the correct orbit.  Instead of two weeks, it would take four weeks to raise the orbit.  Expending the fuel required to do that would shorten the satellite’s lifetime from 20 years to 18 years, still more than enough to cover its mission.  He added that NASA and NOAA also do not see the same problems with this motor that occurred with the others.

GOES-R has six instruments.  Mandt explained that the spacecraft’s primary instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), will have three times the spectral resolution of its predecessors and will be able to scan from the North to South poles 5 times faster.  It will be able to zoom in on a specific storm and look at it every 30 seconds — a temporal resolution that will “revolutionize forecasting.”  

Japan’s Himawari 8, already in orbit, has an ABI, enabling NOAA to test out new algorithms before GOES-R is launched, he added.

GOES-R also has a lightning mapper that will allow tracking cloud-to-cloud lightning in addition to cloud-to-ground, and lightning over oceans.  Another instrument will be able to spot not only when fog is forming, but when it is decaying, which will improve airport operations, for example. Space weather instruments also are aboard to study activity on the Sun that can affect the Earth.

Louis Uccellini, Director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, enthused that the GOES-R will provide “new and improved forecasts and warnings from the Sun to the sea to help save lives and property.”

Representing the private weather industry, Mary Glackin, Senior Vice President for Public-Private Partnerships at the Weather Company, commended the government’s support for systems like GOES-R and open data policies that allow data to be “capitalized to the fullest.”  She said the private weather industry is ready to use the GOES-R data thanks to efforts by NOAA over many years. 

With Hurricane Matthew bearing down on Haiti and possibly on course towards the East Coast of the United States, questions arose as to whether more lives and property will be saved when GOES-R’s improved instruments are operating.  Uccelliini stressed that the effort to save lives is based on a partnership with people on the ground who need to make decisions to evacuate and effectively convey that urgency.  There is a “human factor embedded in all of that,” he emphasized.

Ironically, this new weather satellite is now at risk because of the weather.  As of October 5, Hurricane Matthew is on track to hit Florida’s Space Coast with some fury.  The GOES-R spacecraft is at Lockheed Martin’s Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, near Cape Canaveral and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.  NOAA’s John Leslie said in an emailed statement that “the team preparing NOAA’s GOES-R spacecraft for launch has taken appropriate safety measures to secure the satellite at its present location….GOES-R is contained in a building that can withstand strong (category 4) hurricane conditions. After the effects of Hurricane Matthew subside, NOAA and NASA will carefully assess the spacecraft and provide an update on its status.”

Assuming GOES-R safely reaches orbit, it and the other three in the series (GOES-S, -T, and -U) will provide continuous observations through 2036.  The program, including a completely new ground system, is being built at a cost $10.9 billion. 

The program has not been trouble free as evidenced by multiple reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and an Independent Review Team (IRT) led by retired industry executive Tom Young that was highly critical of the management of both GOES-R and its polar-orbiting counterpart the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).   As recently as this August, Senator John Thune, Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which oversees NOAA, sent a letter to NOAA Administrator Kathy Sullivan asking 11 detailed questions about both GOES and JPSS, both of which have experienced schedule delays and cost overruns.  A major congressional concern has been whether gaps in satellite coverage might develop if older satellites stop functioning before new ones are launched.

That is not a concern in this case, at least, since there are three functioning GOES satellites already and only two are needed for an operational constellation.   GOES-R will become the fourth satellite, but the first with these improved capabilities.

Lockheed Martin builds the satellites and some of the instruments.  Harris Corporation built the ABI as well as the GOES-R ground segment.

A memorial service will be held on October 3, 2016 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC for Dick Malow, a legendary House Appropriations Committee staff member who had considerable influence on NASA’s programs in the 1980s and 1990s.  He later joined the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and was a member of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee at the time of his death.

Richard N. Malow, 77, was born in Detroit, MI and moved to the Washington area in 1964 to work as a research assistant at the Library of Congress, but he earned his status as one of the most influential congressional staff members in civilian space policy as clerk of the House Appropriations Veterans Affairs-Housing and Urban Development-Independent Agencies (VA-HUD) subcommittee.  NASA was funded under that subcommittee at the time.  The clerk of an appropriations subcommittee is the top staff position. 

Dick Malow in 1992.  Photo credit:  Space News (used with permission)

Malow was in that position during tumultuous years at NASA as the agency responded to President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 directive to build a space station within a decade, recovered from the 1986 space shuttle Challenger tragedy, launched the then-defective Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, and dealt with the constrained budgets of the time. His influence was felt in virtually all of NASA’s programs, human and robotic, but particularly the space station program which underwent many changes as costs grew.  (NASA spent approximately $11 billion on the Space Station Freedom program in its first 9 years without building any flight hardware; the program was completely restructured in 1993 and became known simply as the International Space Station).   Malow fiercely protected the space station’s science capabilities as NASA repeatedly downsized the program.  As Andrew Lawler wrote in the November 2-8, 1992 edition of Space News,  “When the first components of NASA’s international space station are orbited, they
could easily bear the inscription ‘Designed by Richard Malow.'”

Malow left the congressional staff in 1994 to join AURA, which operates ground- and space-based telescopes including several in Chile and Hubble (through the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD).  He was AURA’s Head of Mission in Chile for many years.

He died on June 2 after a lengthy illness and was buried in Michigan.

The memorial service will be held in the Member’s Room on the first floor of the Jefferson Building (the main building) of the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill at 2:00 pm ET.

Editor’s Note:  I worked closely with Dick when he was on the committee staff and I was at the Congressional Research Service.   He truly was one of a kind.  His passing is a great loss for the space policy community.

NASA announced today that the new Associate Administrator (AA) for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is Thomas Zurbuchen, professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  A physicist who specializes in solar and space physics (heliophysics), he also is the founding director of the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering.  The appointment is effective on October 3, 2016.

Zurbuchen replaces John Grunsfeld, who retired from NASA in April.   Geoffrey Yoder has been serving as acting AA in the interim.  Yoder indicated today that he will retire from NASA at the end of the year.

Thomas Zurbuchen.  Photo credit:  University of Michigan website.

SMD oversees NASA’s programs in astrophysics, planetary science, earth science, and heliophysics, which are funded at about $5 billion per year in total.  Zurbuchen has never worked for NASA, but was involved in two NASA programs — the MESSENGER spacecraft that studied Mercury (the closest planet to the Sun) and the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) that is at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point and provides data on solar eruptions that feed into forecasts of space weather.  He also participated in the European Space Agency’s Ulysses project that sent a spacecraft to orbit the Sun.  (Ulysses originated as a joint NASA-ESA project where both agencies were to send spacecraft to orbit the Sun, but development of NASA’s spacecraft was terminated by President Ronald Reagan.  NASA continued to participate in ESA’s mission thereafter in a different role.)

Zurbuchen earned his Ph.D. and master’s degree in physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland.  He received the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Young Researcher Award in 1996-1997, the U.S. National Science and Technology Council Presidential Early Career for Scientists and Engineers Award in 2004, and a NASA Group Achievement Award for the Ulysses program in 2006.

He has served on several committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and chaired the recent study committee that produced the report “Advancing Science with Cubesats: Thinking Inside the Box.”

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have collected and analyzed data that offer more evidence — but not certainty — that plumes of water vapor are escaping from the ocean that lies beneath miles of ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa.   Such plumes are known to exist on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and scientists see parallels at Europa, but the data remain inconclusive.  At the direction of Congress, notably Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), NASA is developing a spacecraft to visit Europa in the 2020s.  Since life as we know it requires water, and there is water on Europa, Culberson and others believe life will be found there.

The observations that were the subject of NASA’s teleconference today were made in 2014.  It has taken that long for the data to be crunched, which required significant software development, and verified and a paper written for publication.

William Sparks, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, discussed the findings of his team, which will be published later this week in the Astrophysical Journal.  He was very cautious, however, noting repeatedly that the observations were made “at the limits” of what can be done with Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument in the far ultraviolet (UV) band of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

The findings are based on imaging observations of what may be water vapor erupting into space through cracks in Europa’s icy crust.  If true, a spacecraft orbiting Europa might be able to dip down and fly through the plumes to study the constituents of that ocean without having to drill through miles of ice.

This composite image shows suspected plumes of
water vapor erupting at the 7 o’clock position off the limb of Jupiter’s
moon Europa. The plumes, photographed by NASA’s Hubble’s Space
Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were seen in silhouette as the moon
passed in front of Jupiter. Hubble’s ultraviolet sensitivity allowed for
the features — rising over 100 miles (160 kilometers) above Europa’s
icy surface — to be discerned. The water is believed to come from a
subsurface ocean on Europa. The Hubble data were taken on January 26,
2014. The image of Europa, superimposed on the Hubble data, is assembled
from data from the Galileo and Voyager missions.Credits: NASA/ESA/W. Sparks (STScI)/USGS Astrogeology Science Center

This is not the first time that scientists have observed what may be plumes on Europa.  In 2013, a team led by Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX announced they thought they had detected water vapor plumes using the same instrument, STIS, but a different method, spectroscopy.

The plumes are erratic, however, and because both the Roth and Sparks observations were made at the limits of Hubble’s capabilities, skepticism remains. NASA’s press release about today’s teleconference said the topic was “evidence of surprising activity on Europa.”  As the teleconference progressed and the scientists continued to emphasize that the findings are not definitive, the question arose as to what was “surprising.”  One of the participants, Britney Schmidt of Georgia Tech, an expert on the Enceladus plumes who compared them to what was observed about Europa, replied: “I am not surprised, but I am excited, and skeptical.”

Sparks himself explained that it is not possible to say with certainty whether what was observed was plumes or an effect of the Hubble instrument itself. While the results are “statistically significant” and he did not know of any natural phenomenon other than plumes to explain the data, he could not rule out that they do not completely understand how the STIS instrument on Hubble works in this type of observation campaign.  Repeated observations using STIS would help determine the characteristics of the instrument and make his team feel more confident, he added.

Jennifer Wiseman, senior Hubble project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, offered that what is exciting about the Sparks observations is that they complement those made by the Roth team.  Roth used spectroscopy, Sparks used imaging — different approaches that produced independent evidence of the plumes. 

Culberson, who chairs the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee, which funds NASA, is the most enthusiastic politician in favor of sending a spacecraft to investigate Europa.  He has added money to NASA’s budget for the past several years to pay for such a mission even though it was not in NASA’s budget plan.   He has specified not only that NASA send a spacecraft to orbit Europa, but to land there.   In this year’s report on the FY2017 CJS appropriations bill, he did agree that the two spacecraft could be launched separately, in 2022 and 2024 respectively, and he wants NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) to be used to launch both of them.

In a statement today, he again stressed that he wants an orbiter and a lander.  “These giant water plumes will make it possible to sample Europa’s ocean from the surface lander which will touch down in about 10 years.”

Hubble’s STIS instrument was repaired on the last Hubble servicing mission in 2009.  John Grunsfeld, a NASA astronaut who later became NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, was one of the space shuttle crew members who fixed the instrument.  He left NASA earlier this year.

NASA astrophysics division director Paul Hertz and Wiseman both extolled the capabilities of Hubble as a result of that servicing mission as evidenced by these findings,  Culberson agreed, saying that Grunsfeld’s “repair work has helped strengthen support” for the Europa mission.

Europa project scientist Curt Neibur, who also participated in the teleconference, stressed that the Europa mission is not being designed to detect life, but to determine habitability — is the environment conducive to the development of life.  He said there is a vigorous and ongoing debate in the science community as to what instruments would be needed to detect life itself elsewhere in the solar system.

Hertz noted that Hubble recently was approved for another two years of operations as part of NASA’s Senior Review process, adding that he expects it to continue operating as long as it has scientific value, which hopefully will be after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is operating so the two telescopes can provide complementary observations.  JWST is designed to study the solar system and universe in the infrared (IR) band, rather than these UV observations using STIS.   It is scheduled for launch in 2018 and Wiseman said it also will be used to look for Europa plumes, allowing observations of transitions of water molecules in the IR band that are not visible in the UV band.