GOES 12 - .
Payload: GOES-M. Mass: 2,105 kg (4,640 lb). Nation: USA. Agency: NOAA. Manufacturer: Palo Alto. Program: GOES. Class: Earth. Type: Weather satellite. Spacecraft: FS-1300. USAF Sat Cat: 26871 . COSPAR: 2001-031A. Apogee: 35,813 km (22,253 mi). Perigee: 35,769 km (22,225 mi). Inclination: 0.0000 deg. Period: 1,436.30 min. Launch delayed from July 12, 15 and 22. The GOES-M weather satellite was placed by the Atlas AC-142 Centaur stage into a 164 x 505 km parking orbit and then a super synchronous transfer orbit of 274 x 42275 km x 20 deg. GOES-M was a Loral 1300-series satellite with a single solar array and a solar attitude control sail. Launch mass was 2279 kg and dry mass 1042 kg. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites were developed by NASA-Goddard and were transferred to the NOAA weather agency when operational. In addition to the usual weather imager/sounder, GOES-M carried a new solar soft X-ray imager. Earlier GOES satellites carried simple X-ray collimator detectors, but the new SXI was a full-fledged grazing incidence telescope similar to the SXT on Japan's Yohkoh satellite. The GOES-M satellite was redesignated GOES 12 once in orbit. GOES 12 was a 980 kg, 973 W spacecraft that carried an IR imager, a "sounder", and an X-ray imager. The IR imager was a Cassegrain telescope covering five wavelength channels, 0.55-0.75, 3.80-4.00, 6.50-7.00, 10.20-11.20, and 11.50-12.50 microns. It provided images covering 3,000 km x 3,000 km every 41 seconds, by scanning the area in 16 square kilometer sections. The "sounder" provided vertical distribution of temperature, moisture and ozone, by passive monitoring in 18 depth-dependent wavelengths. (Long wave IR: 14.71, 14.37, 14.06, 13.64, 13.37, 12.66, and 12.02 microns. Medium wave IR: 11.03, 9.71, 7.43, 7.02, and 6.51 microns. Short wave IR: 4.57, 4.52, 4.45, 4.13, 3.98, and 3.74 microns. There was also another band at visible wavelength 0.7 microns, to provide pictures of cloud tops.) The sounder covered an area of 3,000 km x 3,000 km in about 42 minutes. Another instrument package named SEM (Space Environment Monitor) monitored the energetic electrons and protons in the magnetosphere and the X-rays from the Sun. The above three had been carried on the earlier GOES missions, but GOES 12 carried also an X-ray imager providing an X-ray (about 0.1-1.0 nm wavelength) picture of the solar disk. For some months, the spacecraft was to be on standby, to be activated and moved to a desired longitude. As of 5 September 2001 located at 89.93 deg W drifting at 0.001 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 74.73W drifting at 0.014E degrees per day.
