Revolutionary technology on display at Space Symposium
This week, the 32nd Annual Space Symposium is drawing crowds at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs.
A big part of the Symposium is the new technology on display.
Some of that technology that will help keep your family safe – and understand the nature of life itself.
Like nature, the weather in Southern Colorado can be unpredictable. The new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) weather satellite will help eliminate some of that uncertainty.
Gary Napier of Lockheed Martin said, “It’s almost like going from standard definition to high definition TV.”
The new GOES satellite has a lot of advances over its predecessors.
“It’s going to (have) four times the resolution that’s currently available and it’s going to be able to scan the Earth five times faster,” said Napier.
There is even a chance that it can help detect severe weather.
Napier said, “We could potentially (give) tornado warnings 15 to 20 minutes more warning time.”
And it has a Colorado tie.
“It’s being built in a clean room in Littleton, Colorado,” said Napier.
The new GOES weather satellite will be able to do things that weather satellites have never been able to do before. But there’s another spacecraft that will look even further – all the way back to the beginning of time.
The James Webb telescope won’t be launched for a couple of years, but time is not that important when you’re looking back as far as this instrument will.
Dr. Jonathan Arenberg of Northrop Grumman said, “We’ll be able to look back to the era of the first luminous objects.”
The purpose for the Webb Telescope is much deeper than for the GOES satellite.
“Philosophically, scientifically, emotionally it begins to put the journey that makes us up into some context,” said Dr. Arenberg.
But both instruments have one thing in common, they’re designed to unravel some of nature’s secrets.
And the GOES currently sitting in Littleton isn’t the only one that Lockheed Martin will launch in the next few years. The company is building four new GOES satellites.
The Space Symposium is one of the largest gatherings of space professionals in the world and technology plays a big part of the exhibits.
Today , we’ll look at some of the latest and greatest when it comes to what could be helping you and your family stay safe.
And we’ll look into some technology that could revolutionize the way we think about our planet and our universe.
More details on this story later today .
