Status Report: GOES-East/West, NOAAPort and Other Satellite Imagery

November 2023- April 2024

Mike Schmidt, Mike Zuranski, Stonie Cooper

Executive Summary

NSF Unidata continues to operate satellite downlink facilities for the NOAAPort Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) and GOES-East and GOES-West rebroadcast services on behalf of UCAR/NCAR and the NSF Unidata community.  All received products are then provided via the Internet Data Distribution system (IDD) in various feeds and via remote access provided by AWIPS EDEX, McIDAS ADDE and THREDDS Data Servers.

Details on various efforts related to maintaining this capability are presented below.

Questions for Immediate Committee Feedback

None at this time.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

• Repurposed a 3.7 m mesh dish located at FL-2 from GOES-15 (GVAR) ingest to NOAAPort SBN ingest, and re-pointed the existing FL-2 NOAAPort dish at the new SBN satellite, Galaxy 31.

These moves were made for three reasons related to the NWS movement of the

SBN from Galaxy 28 (located at 89W) to Galaxy 31 (located at 121W):

• The need for continued periodic GOES-15 (which formerly acted as GOES-West) operations was obviated by the successful launch, test out, and christening of GOES-18 as GOES-West, and the movement of GOES-17 to a parking orbit at 104.7W where it will serve as an on-orbit spare for GOES-East and GOES-West

• A second FL-2 mesh dish is configured to ingest GOES-14 data whenever it is returned to service either for checkout or if it assumes an active role as a spare for either GOES-East or GOES-West

• The line-of-sight from the existing NOAAPort dish on the south side of FL-2 to Galaxy 31 is impaired by large branches from trees outside of FL-3 and FL-2

Getting the worst offending tree removed or, at least, pruned enough to mitigate the problems being caused by the branches is unlikely.

• Work towards establishing an additional GOES-R downlink in a locations that has an unimpeded view of the southern sky continues
  

See Ongoing Activities for additional information.

• Establish a new NOAAPort downlink at the NSF-owned Marshall field site

An effort to establish a satellite downlink facility at the NCAR Marshall field site (just south of Boulder) has been slowed by an NSF moratorium on any ground penetrations until an environmental impact assessment (NEPA) has been completed.  A non-penetrating ground mount will be installed in the Marshall compound, and a 3.8 m dish will be installed on the mount in the coming weeks.  Following the satellite pad and dish installations, electronics needed to complete the downlink will be installed, and ingest testing will begin.

After the Marshall installation is complete, and assuming that high quality NOAAPort ingest can be achieved, and the interference of the trees at FL-2 can not be mitigated, the existing FL-2 NOAAPort solid dish will be converted to GRB downlink as it has an unobstructed view of the GOES-East orbital slot.  This conversion would require that existing quad-shielded RG-11 coax be replaced by a dual run of LMR-400 coax from the dish to the 2nd floor computer room, and the LNB on the dish outside of the FL-2 cafeteria be moved to the dish being repurposed.

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

• Participate in UW/SSEC’s “fanout server” sharing of GOES-East/West data (redistribution of the GRB-200 UDP unicast stream over TCP) for GOES GRB products.
  
  We are feeding from SSEC’s GOES-East/West fanout servers, and they are feeding from the ingest machine that we operate.  Sharing of the feed streams has allowed  SSEC and Unidata to minimize effects of solar and terrestrial interference.

• Ingest GOES ReBroadcast (GRB) streams from GOES-East/West in real-time
  
  As described in previous status reports, the 4.5 m dish located on the eastern satellite pad at the NCAR Mesa Lab has been used for GOES-West ingest since terrestrial interference (TI) was observed when pointing at GOES-East (GOES-16) in the fall of 2017.   Replacement of power poles and lines to the south and downhill from the Mesa Lab prompted us to run a test to see if TI was still a problem when pointing at GOES-16.  The results of the multi-day test convinced us that we could return the dish on the eastern satellite pad to GOES-East ingest, and proceed with installation of a dish on the western pad and use it for GOES-West ingest.  

In the spring of 2022, we were given a 3.8 m satellite dish that was being excessed by a private company that was relocating their operations.  This dish will be installed on the western satellite pad at the NCAR Mesa Lab.  The running of dual coax cables from the western pad to the main Mesa Lab machine room has been completed, so the next step is the physical installation of this dish on the existing mounting pole

• Continue to distribute GOES-East and GOES-West data via the LDM/IDD and serve the data via the TDS, ADDE and EDEX
  
  The volume of data available in the SATELLITE datastream can be seen in:
  
  http://rtstats.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/iddstats_vol_nc?SATELLITE+oliver.unidata.ucar.edu

Future Activities

IDD NIMAGE Datastream

The IDD NIMAGE feed was repurposed a few years ago from a feed that only contains satellite image products distributed in NOAAPort to one that can include value-added satellite products.  The question for the committee is if there are other products that should be added to the NIMAGE feed?

VALUE-ADDED Products

We welcome contributions of additional value-added Level 2 satellite products by community members.

To date, Texas Tech University (Eric Bruning), CSU/CIRA, and NOAA’s Vlab have provided value-added Level 2 products created from satellite image and lightning scans, and these have been distributed to the community in the NIMAGE IDD feed.

SSEC Collaboration

Continue working with SSEC on their fanout approach that insulates GRB ingestion from expected (e.g., twice per year solar interference periods; etc.) and unexpected (e.g., TI caused) service interruptions

Relevant Metrics

• The volume of GOES-East/West GRB products, 15 GB/hour average and 20 GB/hour maximum,  is the second most voluminous feed on the IDD.  This can be seen in the real-time statistics listings from any of the accumulators for our toplevel IDD relay clusters under the SATELLITE feed.  For instance :
  
  https://rtstats.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/rtstats_summary_volume?oliver.unidata.ucar.edu

• Feeding data to a slowly growing list of sites via the IDD:
  
  We are distributing all or part of the GOES-East/West GRB products to groups within UCAR/NCAR (including EOL, RAL and ourselves), U.S. Universities, U.S. Government (e.g. NOAA and Military sites) and a number of international sites.

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

1. Managing Geoscience Data
   Providing TDS, ADDE and EDEX servers for GOES-East/West imagery and products benefits the greater community by providing access to real-time observations from the U.S. operational satellite constellation.
   
2. Supporting People
   Providing access to data in real-time has been a fundamental Unidata activity since its inception.  Continuing to provide data enables Unidata sites to focus on their educational and research activities.
   

Prepared  April 2024