 Every day, millions of people depend on a series of satellites that most of them have never even given thought to. And now that series of satellites is going to be undergoing a major upgrade. And this is your space pod for November 30th, 2016. You probably don't think about them regularly, and I know that I don't think about them regularly, but you can find their data as close to you as being on your smartphone. And of course, I'm talking about weather satellites. High above us monitoring the atmosphere, temperature, and a multitude of other data points, weather satellites give us the information that allows us to help plan out our day a little bit better. The idea of monitoring weather from high altitudes is not truly a new one. In 1946, launching rockets carrying cameras to observe cloud cover began, but this resulted in no impact to forecasts, since the reliability of both the rocket and cameras of the arrow were poor, not to mention the poor resolution of the cameras as well. Vanguard 2 was the first satellite specifically made for monitoring weather and launched in 1959. It looked at cloud cover, but because it was spin-stabilized in only one axis of rotation, it would often return unusable data. The first truly successful weather satellite was launched by NASA in 1960 called Tyros-1. It was an experimental satellite to see if low Earth orbit could be a useful area for scientific observation of the Earth. It carried a television camera and several other instruments and proved that satellites were perfect for helping monitor and develop weather forecasts. NASA's Nimbus program came next. Seven satellites launched in the polar orbit starting in 1964 commenced the first operational purpose-built weather and Earth remote sensing satellites, also forming the first weather and remote sensing constellation as well. But the best known system in meteorology is the Geostationary Operational Environmental System, also known as GOES. This series of satellites was first launched in 1975, and currently there are three operational satellites, GOES 13, 14, and 15, with one on its way to geostationary orbit, soon to be the fourth operational GOES satellite. The one on its way is currently known as GOES-R, launched in November of 2016. It's the most powerful weather satellite in the GOES constellation because of its upgraded instrumentation. GOES-R includes the latest imaging systems to view the Earth with. The advanced baseline imager views the Earth in 16 spectral bands, providing three times the data of the previous GOES imagery systems. This will allow forecasts to catch storms in earlier stages of development. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper does exactly what it sounds like it does. Tap lightning from geostationary orbit. This one, however, is able to penetrate through clouds that may block its view and track all lightning strikes, even cloud to cloud. This instrument will allow for more accurate forecasts for severe storm warnings. Two instruments will also face the sun, a solar ultraviolet imager which will view the sun in ultraviolet light continuously from its geostationary perch, and an x-ray detection package that will see how x-rays associated with solar events affect things such as communications, navigation, airline travel, and power grids. In addition to the sun, two more instruments on GOES-R will study the environment in space itself. The space environment in C2Suite consists of sensors that will collect data on proton, electron, and heavy ion flexes in geosynchronous orbit. GOES-R also has a magnetometer to measure the Earth's magnetic field and provide updates and potential alerts on geomagnetic storms. Thanks for watching this SpacePod. I'm Jared Ed. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And of course, don't forget to follow us on our various social media accounts all over where we have tomorrow. And a big, big shout out, of course, to all of our Patreon patrons. Without you, we wouldn't be able to make these Space Pods. So here's to you, our patrons. Thank you so much. And if you would like to help crowd fund the Space Pods of tomorrow, head on over to patreon.com slash spacepod. So until the next Space Pod, keep exploring.