NOAA has declared the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-18 fully operational as GOES West, marking a significant milestone for severe weather detection in the Western Hemisphere. Launched on March 1, 2022, the primary instrument aboard GOES-18 is the L3Harris high-resolution, Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). L3Harris also produced the enterprise ground system which processes the imagery and controls the weather satellite constellation and its suite of instruments. The ABI views Earth with 16 spectral bands and provides three times more spectral information, four times the spatial resolution, and more than five times faster coverage than the previous generation imager. The ABI onboard GOES-18 provides critical weather data on the western contiguous U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, Mexico, Central America and the Pacific. GOES-18 replaces GOES-17 as GOES West, located 22,236 miles above the equator over the Pacific Ocean. GOES-17 will become an on-orbit standby.
