The satellite formerly known as GOES-R (so Prince, right?) has
transmitted its first images back to Earth, and they are flooring.
From
the details on the face of the moon to the incredible resolution of
cumulus over the Caribbean, these first pixels portend a sunny future
for NOAA’s new GOES-16 satellite.
Meteorologists are drooling.
This release coincides with the first day of the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting.
There are thousands of weather geeks in Seattle this week, and — at
least on Monday — they’re all looking at this next-gen satellite
imagery.
As we’ve written before, GOES-R satellite has six
instruments, two of which are weather-related.
The Advanced Baseline
Imager, developed by Harris Corp., is the “camera” that looks down on
Earth.
The pictures it sends back will be clearer and more detailed than
what’s created by the current satellites.
This composite color full-disk visible animation is from 1:07 p.m. EDT on January 15, 2017 and was created using several of the 16 spectral channels available on the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument.
Seen here are North and South America and the surrounding oceans. GOES-16 observes Earth from an equatorial view approximately 22,300 miles high, creating full disk images like these, extending from the coast of West Africa, to Guam, and everything in between. The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing on-orbit testing.
The ABI can scan half the Earth — or the “full disk” — in five minutes.
If forecasters want to home in on an area of severe weather, it can scan
that region every 30 seconds. Weather radars can’t even scan faster
than six minutes.
Clouds swirls about Mexico and Central America in this animation from GOES-16 captured on January 15, 2017.
The other weather instrument, the Global Lightning Mapper, will
continuously track and transmit all lightning strikes across North
America and its surrounding oceans.
Developed by Lockheed, it can detect
the changes in light on Earth and thus the rate and intensity of
lightning in thunderstorms and hurricanes.
Research has shown that lightning is an excellent early warning indicator for approaching severe storms and the development of tornadoes.
This data visualization shows actual lightning measurements captured by an array of ground-based lighting detectors capable of tracing how lightning propagates through the atmosphere and simulates how the GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper will monitor atmospheric flashes.
This technology could provide critical minutes of valuable warning time in advance of approaching severe storms.
GOES-16 is expected to go operational in November, approximately one year after its launch.
On the right, an image from GOES-13 and on the left, the first public image from GOES-16, both taken Jan. 15.
This composite color full-disk visible image
(on the left) was captured 1:07 p.m. ET on Jan. 15 using several of the 16 spectral
channels available on the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager.
The image
shows North and South America and the surrounding oceans.
It was an hour before the
start of the race, and Philippe Kahn was in a state of panic.
He was
sailing straight for the starting line off Point Fermin, just south of
Los Angeles, and the hydraulic system on Pegasus, his 50-foot open-format yacht, had just failed.
Kahn was about to embark on the 2009 Transpac,
the infamous, century-old sailing race that takes the bold and
well-fixed from the Californian coast to the shores of Honolulu.
It’s a
voyage through more than 2,500 miles of unsettled seas and gusting
winds.
And without hydraulics to control the boat’s stabilizing canting
keel, Kahn didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping her upright.
Fifty minutes later, one of the boat’s two hydraulic rams was back
up.
It would have to do.
And with just a few more hiccups along the way,
the light-handed Pegasus was triumphant.
Kahn and his lone
crewmate, Mark “Crusty” Christensen, shattered the transpacific
double-handed record with a time of 7 days, 19 hours, 38 minutes and 35
seconds.
The previous record-setters had taken more than 10 days to make the
trip in 2001.
So how did Kahn do it, with a partially crippled boat, no
less?
By being singularly obsessed with optimization — finding the right
crew and the right technology to survive and prosper on the high seas.
One of the original prototypes for a sleep and motion tracker that Kahn used on his Transpac races. Talia Herman/Wired
By day, 61-year-old Kahn is the CEO of Fullpower Technologies, which
builds the motion-sensing technology inside personal trackers like Jawbone Up and Nike FuelBand.
Sailing permeates life at the company, where about a fifth of the staff
— including an Olympic competitor — has a background in the sport.
“The ocean lifestyle is my meditation, where I find myself,” says Kahn.
He tries to get on the water for a couple of hours each day, immersing himself in a marine sanctuary he shares with sea otters and whales.
Kahn recruited Christensen, an engineer and decorated offshore sailor,
after the 2009 Transpac, and they regularly take a break from the office
in the middle of the day to catch the wind at its freshest.
The overlap between worlds goes further: Kahn considers his sailing
machines perfect test beds for the sensors that are his livelihood.
To
be self-sufficient on the water for seven days or more, every system
must be robustly built and perfectly tuned.
Kahn rattles them off:
gyroscopes. Electronic flux-gate compasses. Humidity sensors. Pressure
sensors. And, of course, satellite navigation.
To make those systems
function at the highest level, Kahn doesn’t settle for off-the-shelf
components.
In his 2009 bid, Kahn and Christensen worked to modify a system that
measures wind direction.
Typically, the constant pitching and rolling of
the boat throws off those measurements.
But by using sensors to detect
that motion and correct for it, they could get crucially enhanced
information about wind conditions.
“We were trying to monitor the sailboat, trying to help us keep it
upright and optimized,” says Kahn, “and it turned out that sailing
became an incredible practical laboratory.”
Their true secret weapon, however, may have been sleep tracking.
When
sailing double-handed, Kahn explains, “there are times when neither one
of us can sleep.
We’ll sleep maybe 45 minutes in 24 hours.”
So Kahn started experimenting with biosensors, creating prototype
sleep monitors that he wore and tested on his Transpac bids a decade
before personal trackers came into prominence.
His prototype appears to
have the sophistication of a Tamagotchi: a single white button, a bulky
square face of translucent blue plastic that reveals the vibrator and
circuit board inside, and a worn navy blue Velcro strap for a wristband.
But underneath the plastic, it has the same functionality as a
Jawbone Up, with a three-axis linear accelerometer to keep track of
micromovements.
With this roughshod design, Kahn and Christensen figured
out how to take 26-minute power naps optimized for each of them, taking
turns at the helm while the other slept.
“Part of our success has been because of our ability to manage sleep better than other people,” Kahn says.
Kahn hopes to find a new yacht worthy of the Transpac — above all, he
considers that record-setting trip something to be proud of.
But his
ambitions of another high-stakes ocean crossing have ebbed at the moment
in favor of mastering a different kind of high-performing sailing
machine.
"The ocean lifestyle is my meditation, where I find myself."
His current target: The Nacra F20 carbon, a 20-foot catamaran with
hulls designed by Morelli & Melvin, the team that worked on the America’s Cup AC72.
The cat is a feat of engineering and design, a beautiful boat with two
sculpted hulls that look as if they could cut butter.
The Nacra features
the curved daggerboards rapidly becoming a mainstay of cat sailing.
They increase the boat’s stability, prevent it from getting knocked away
from the wind, and provide some lift, allowing the boat to ride higher
and encounter less resistance from waves.
Kahn stands next to a beached catamaran; its two rudders with winglets
at the base are visible.
The gate to Kahn’s right opens up into the
harbor’s parking lot, so it’s just a quick roll down to the boat ramp to
get it into the water.
Talia Herman/Wired
But as with the equipment aboard his Transpac yacht, Kahn isn’t
satisfied with the best of the best.
So he started ripping the Nacra
apart.
In his Santa Cruz shop, Kahn’s team has created new daggerboards,
replacing the so-called C-foils with L-foils that angle inward to
provide controlled lift to the hulls.
They’re the same basic design as
those in the AC72.
Without foils, a boat’s speed is limited by the drag
of the hulls.
“But once you get the foils out on a cat,” says Kahn,
“there’s nothing but a little bit of drag that keeps you from going
faster and faster and faster” — up to 30 knots at its fastest so far.
Kahn’s boat is one of the first of its size to try foiling like this.
At Kahn’s home on the docks — built there for easy access to the harbor’s boat ramp — he shows off the foils as Pegasus sits beached on his driveway.
They’re thin, tapered fins with a gently curving S-shape.
At the Pegasus
workshop, filled with dripping resin and flying fiberglass, Kahn’s team
shapes them by layering sheets of carbon into wooden molds.
That shape has remained largely unchanged, but there’s one more
crucial element: the elevator, the bottom to the foil’s “L” that
provides that crucial lift.
It attaches to the fin separately, allowing
the team to make minute changes that could make all the difference in
the boat’s foiling hydrodynamics.
Kahn got his first taste of the water on the coast of France, where
he began windsurfing as a 14-year-old.
To see him sailing on his heavily
modded cat with Christensen is to see that teenage adrenaline junkie
sparring with the wind.
Almost as soon as the boat leaves the harbor,
Kahn is off the boat, feet straddling the side of the hull as his body
dangles off the edge.
He’s held in place by a trapeze attached to his
body harness.
A long tiller extension allows him to steer a sailboat
that he technically isn’t even on.
Pointing to the winglets placed perpendicular to the boat’s two
normal rudders (another source of lift, along with the foils), Kahn
describes his beast as “more like an airplane than a sailboat.”
But that
comparison is most apt when the boat gets going in the 12-knot breeze
off the coast of Santa Cruz.
Every time the boat hits 11 knots or so,
the cat’s stiff, lightweight carbon body rises above the waves,
revealing a glimmer of sunlight between the water and the base of the
hulls.
The wind isn’t quite as strong as the boat would like it, and ocean
swells break over its twin bows, driving the boat back into the water
almost as soon as it starts to rise.
But those brief moments, the hulls
hovering weightlessly over the water, are mesmerizing.
“I can’t say how cool it is,” says Kahn.
“The feeling is really that of flying.”
The boat’s clearly still in experimental mode.
As Christensen and
Kahn leap over the waves, sea water sloshes through roughly hewn holes
where the daggerboards pierce the hulls.
Ideally, those holes will be
plugged, eliminating the drag from the water inside.
But “that’s the
last half of a percent of performance,” says Kahn — and the boat still
has plenty of optimization ahead.
Every day it seems a new improvement is made.
After its last race,
through California from Richmond to Stockton, the team decided to
slightly modify the bearings that orient the foil in its place, allowing
for an extra degree or two of range that lets them better tailor the
lift to the conditions they’re sailing in.
Right now, the daggerboards
are hoisted into place by hand.
Eventually, they’ll have a line attached
to more easily put them in place.
Over time, those small refinements will hopefully help team Pegasus
dominate in its races like it did in the Transpac.
This week, though,
it’s taking on a smaller challenge: Competing for the first time in the
casual Wednesday night races out of Santa Cruz Harbor.
Sizing up their competition at the docks, it doesn’t seem quite fair
to put this racing machine up against old-school monohulls, dragging
their heavy lead keels like a ball and chain.
But Kahn’s in it for the
love of sailing, not for the trophies.
The compromise? “We’ll just try
to do two laps for every one of theirs.”
In the mid-20th century we began launching satellites into space that would help us determine the exact circumference of the Earth: 40,030 km. But over 2000 years earlier, a man in Ancient Greece came up with nearly the exact same figure using just a stick and his brain.
The Vendée Globe is the only solo, non-stop, without assistance sailboat race around the world. Nicknamed “Everest of seas”, only 71 sailors under 138 managed to reach the fish line since its creation. This figure is showing how difficult this worldwide event is, in which sailors are facing extreme cold, huge waves and threatening sky across the great south. Extremes conditions involve exceptional means. The race department asks CLS, Collecte Localisation Satellite, a CNES subsidiary, to watch this modern times adventurer from space. Read more on : race.cls.fr
Iceberg detection
To detect the presence of icebergs and predict their direction, CLS has developed a solution used to:
Detect iceberg populations produced by glaciers in the Antarctic using radar satellite observation data
Define risk zones
Model the direction of icebergs and their melt-rate according to currents and surface temperatures, wind levels and the shape and size of the iceberg
Readjust the direction model using observation data from radar satellites in the Subantartic zone (around 50° South).
Perform (using these radar images) a correct display of icebergs of a significant size (>50m).
CLS is thus able to provide race organisers with maps of the Antarctic, with the location of iceberg populations and predictions concerning their drift direction
Armel Le Cléac'h smashes Vendée Globe race record in spectacular style 74 days 3 hours 35 min 46 sec... this is what it took Armel to win this Vendée Globe. In reality, it took Armel 10 years to win this race after finishing twice at the second place in the last editions.
After
two and a half months at sea, Armel Le Cleac'h has finally achieved his
dream in one of the world's toughest yacht races -- and in
record-breaking fashion.
Twice a
runner-up in the grueling Vendee Globe event, the French skipper
celebrated his first victory Thursday as he crossed the finish line off
the coast of western France.
He completed the solo round-the-world race in a new fastest time of 74
days, three hours, 35 minutes and 46 seconds.
It was almost four days
quicker than the previous record set by compatriot Francois Gabart in
the 2012-13 edition.
In the morning of the arrival
That time Le Cleac'h was just two hours
back in second place -- the smallest losing margin since the race, held
every four years, started in 1988.
"This
is a dream come true," said the 39-year-old, who covered 24,499.52
nautical miles at an average speed of 13.77 knots during the race.
"Today is a perfect day. My team have been amazing they're the dream team, and this is their day too."
Historical records
(Infographie : Olivier Bernard)
Race
organizers predicted that second-placed British sailor Alex Thomson
would cross the line 12 hours after Cleac'h, who finished at 1537 GMT
(1037 ET).
"I'm very happy for Alex, it's a great
second place," Le Cleac'h added. "It has been very difficult with him
behind me, he gave me a really hard time in this Vendee Globe."
Le
Cleac'h, sailing his 60-foot vessel Banque Populaire, was met by an
estimated 350,000 fans in freezing conditions at Les Sables d'Olonne.
France has now won all eight editions of the race.
Thomson,
who finished third in 2013, looked to be threatening a late comeback
after sailing 536.8 nautical miles in 24 hours -- reclaiming the record
he held between 2003-2012 for distance covered in that time span.
Hugo Boss damaged startboard foil
(photo : Pierre-Henri Beguin)
He
led the race in the opening weeks, and set two records in reaching
South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, but a damaged starboard foil dented
Thomson's chances of breaking the French monopoly of the title.
Often referred to as "the Everest of the Seas," only half the entrants usually complete the course.
Of the 138 sailors to start the previous seven races, just 71 finished -- while three competitors died.
This time, 11 of the 29 sailors who began the voyage in Les Sables d'Olonne on November 6 have pulled out.
The
man in last place, Sebastien Destremau, was almost 10,000 nautical
miles behind Le Cleac'h and had yet to pass the notorious Cape Horn off
the coast of Chile.
This year's race also features 66-year-old
US skipper and lifelong acute asthma sufferer Rich Wilson, who is
almost three times the age of youngest competitor Alan Roura.
