A Satellite Goes Blind

For more than ten years, television weathermen have been displaying satellite maps of low pressures, high pressures, twisters and tempests, sometimes impressing their audiences with the scientific predictability of their forecasts. But the geostationary operational environmental satellites (GOES), which transmit the images for those maps, have been highly unpredictable: of the six GOES launched since 1975, five are not functioning properly. The $70 million GOES 5, sent up in 1981 to cover the East Coast and the Atlantic Ocean for at least five years, became the latest casualty last week when it went blind, just before the peak of the hurricane season.

The loss of the satellite means that forecasters will have to make do with pictures sent from GOES 6, currently stationed over the Pacific. As a stopgap remedy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service are moving GOES 6 to a more easterly position, where it will be able to monitor the continental U.S. and part of the Atlantic. The maneuver, which calls for a carefully choreographed pattern of propellant bursts, could take nearly three weeks.