The host satellite, SES-14, moved to its final destination in Geostationary orbit (GEO) in October of that year, where it became operational, sending important imagery of the Earth’s upper atmosphere to researchers at NASA and the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) courtesy of the GOLD payload.

In the six year’s that the GOLD mission has been operational, it has witnessed impressive geomagnetic storms caused by solar storms, and sent back imagery to Earth that was previously unobtainable for researchers. This has led to multiple published studies and the potential for better prediction of space weather, which can impact satellites and other systems on Earth.

To learn more about the GOLD mission and what it has accomplished in its first six years in operation, we sat down with Dr. Richard Eastes, a Research Scientist at LASP, and one of the driving forces behind the GOLD mission.

Government Satellite Report (GSR): What is the NASA GOLD mission? Why is it important?

Dr. Richard Eastes: The GOLD mission is a NASA mission of opportunity. GOLD stands for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk. The limb is just the horizon. The disk is the view of the Earth that you get when viewing it from GEO. I would assume your readers have all seen NOAA satellite images from GEO, that’s the disk.

The existing views that we get of the disk essentially cover one hemisphere. More accurately, they probably cover about a third of the disk. Including the limb – the horizon – as well, about half of the Earth is covered by GOLD’s observations.

For this particular mission, we’re looking at the upper atmosphere, above 75 miles or 120 km. Traditionally, we have studied these areas and the effects of space weather using imagery from satellites in low earth orbit (LEO). But that’s a very restricted view that limits how often you can image any one particular area or anomaly.

If we identify a point of interest and image it from LEO, it could take upwards of 12 to 24 hours until we can image it again. Atmospheric changes can happen quickly, in only an hour. For us to understand what is happening and see any changes as they occur, we need the ability to take a sequence of images. This allows us to track changes more effectively.

We’ve studied the upper atmosphere’s climate extensively. But when we try to go beyond the climatology, that’s the seasonal changes, there’s difficulty in understanding the short-term changes. That’s especially important for space weather, and that’s the type of data you need to really make progress beyond the climatology we have now.

GSR: How does GOLD get that information? What is the payload comprised of, and what does it do?

Dr. Richard Eastes: The GOLD mission essentially involves launching an instrument into orbit. That instrument includes two cameras that are capable of what we would call spectral imaging. That means we can separate the different wavelengths of light in the images, and we can look at different emissions, or light, from oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere.

With the GOLD instrument, we can see where light from the Earth’s atmosphere is coming from and how that light is stimulated by the short wavelength radiation in the Sun, and also by the aurora.

These types of emissions are what we’re looking at. We’re looking at that light and those emissions to help us understand how the upper atmosphere is changing. So, by looking at the different colors – essentially our wavelengths of light – we can understand what the composition of the atmosphere is and how that’s changing.

In comparison to previous missions, GOLD is unique in its ability to image the disk and see the temperature. By combining the data coming from GOLD, we can get a much better idea of what is occurring in the upper atmosphere.

Since the GOLD instrument is in GEO, we can continue to look at the same locations and see how these measurements and data change over time. We can image rapidly, in less than half an hour, and see those changes in real time versus having to come back the next day. That’s massively important for gaining a better understanding of space weather and its impact on our Earth.

“The more we observe with missions like GOLD, the more we can build models that enable us to predict the frequency and severity of solar storms and geomagnetic storm events…these models will enable us to identify when a geomagnetic storm is coming, and how serious it will be, so we can prepare accordingly.” – Dr. Eastes

For example, there was a massive geomagnetic storm this past May. That was an incredible opportunity for GOLD to shine, and for its findings to stand out. We were able to sit there and watch how things change in the space environment, or how the space weather changed as it was happening. That’s something we haven’t been able to do before for the upper atmosphere.

GSR: How was the NASA GOLD payload placed in orbit? Did NASA launch its own purpose-built satellite for the GOLD mission?

Dr. Richard Eastes: I mentioned that GOLD is a mission of opportunity for NASA. That effectively means that the instrument is being flown on a satellite that serves another primary purpose. In the past, that usually meant the satellite is being flown for other scientific missions and purposes. In fact, missions of opportunity usually have some connection to the other scientific missions of that satellite.

However, GOLD is somewhat different in that it’s being flown as a hosted payload onboard a commercial communication satellite operated by SES.

GSR: Why was a hosted payload chosen for this mission?

Dr. Richard Eastes: Ultimately, pursuing GOLD as a hosted payload made financial sense. It was significantly less expensive to launch GOLD as a hosted payload than it would have been to launch it into orbit ourselves. Even launching satellites into LEO is expensive, and GEO can cost three or four times what a LEO launch can cost, so it would not have been financially viable to launch GOLD if we had to launch it ourselves.

Working with SES on GOLD has been an excellent experience. They have decades of experience flying satellites in GEO, and their satellites are highly reliable. Their knowledge of operating satellites enables us to simply give them a set of commands, which they upload to the spacecraft, and we can be confident that everything is done correctly. They then reliably deliver all data from GOLD to us at LASP.

I think the science community is impressed with what we’ve what we’ve been able to do, and how much we’ve been able to do by working with a commercial company and launching a hosted payload.

GSR: Was the process of launching a hosted payload difficult or challenging in any way?

Dr. Richard Eastes: The relationship wasn’t always without its challenges. There were certainly speedbumps and roadblocks that needed to be navigated – especially when it came to schedule. Candidly, commercial companies are used to operating much more quickly than science missions.

Thankfully, SES was able to get us involved very early in the process. This gave us an excellent picture of what was happening. They also took the time to meet with us and discuss the details. They brought in the people that could answer our important questions – including questions about interfaces and ensuring that our payload would interoperate with the satellite.

In fact, when we told them about challenges that we were working through with the payload, they often would give us suggestions and provide even better solutions than our team could identify. One example involved the power supply. There was some discussion about how we could adapt to the voltage of a commercial satellite. SES simply offered to provide us with the 28 volts that were needed to power the payload, and solved the problem for us.

Even during integration, we had someone there with the spacecraft vendor fulltime to help with monitoring the spacecraft and monitoring our instrument. If the vendor needed to move the payload they wanted to ensure t it wasn’t mistakenly  damaged so they had someone from our team ensure their activities wouldn’t cause a problem for us.

GSR: How long has the GOLD payload been delivering data to NASA and its mission partners?

Dr. Richard Eastes: Following launch, it takes a while for the satellite to get to GEO and begin operating. So, GOLD came online about six years ago this month (October of 2018). That’s when we started making our first observations.

At that time, the sun was going through what we refer to as solar minimum. The sun goes through an 11-year cycle, and it was solar minimum when GOLD came online. We’re about at a solar maximum now. So, we’re really halfway through one solar cycle at this point.

We’ve been delivering data that entire time. Throughout these six years, we have been making daily observations – multiple scans on the day side and multiple scans on the night side of each day.

GSR: There were recently two studies published based on observations from the GOLD mission. The first looked at changes to the ionosphere due to a massive geomagnetic storm. What causes storms like this? What impact did this storm have, and why was it newsworthy or significant?

Dr. Richard Eastes: The sun sends out clouds of plasma that we call coronal mass ejections. And when one of those hits the earth, it can generate and deposit a lot of power in the  Earth’s upper atmosphere. That power gets transmitted into particles that start flowing, which generates currents and magnetic fields.

While this disturbs the Earth’s magnetic field it also produces the aurora, which was one of the results in this most recent May storm. People saw the aurora really far south, potentially as far south as Florida. I even heard some reports that it was seen as far south as Puerto Rico. Typically, you must go up north to places like Iceland to see it. This was a very rare occasion where people much further south could simply walk out in their backyard and see the aurora.

But these changes don’t just cause the aurora. They also can interrupt HF communications that are used for numerous applications, including airplane communications. It can also interfere with GPS systems. I heard reports that during the May storm, there were numerous farmers in the Midwest who rely on GPS for precision agriculture to ensure chemical and seed distribution is done properly that couldn’t plant their crops during the storm.

There are so many systems that rely on GPS today. All of these systems – even automated construction equipment that is navigated by GPS – experienced outages and other disturbances as a result of this May storm.

GSR: In the second study, GOLD identified how a wave of plasma from the sun impacted the Earth. What role did GOLD play in identifying this? What impact did this wave of plasma have?

Dr. Richard Eastes: We don’t really see the plasma directly from the sun. What we see is the effects of that plasma when it reaches Earth. During the May event, we began our observations on the night side and then continued into the day side. We saw some things that we’ve never seen before.

We were able to get a picture of the neutral atmosphere and the ionosphere. We learned about the temperatures in the atmosphere and how that varies. We witnessed electric fields causing some of the nightside atmosphere to move at rapid speeds – as high as 400 meters per second – towards the poles.

It’s important to identify these changes because changes in the upper atmosphere have widely distributed impacts. While Earth’s weather is more localized – a storm in the Atlantic Ocean might have no bearing or impact on the Pacific Ocean – space weather changes impact the entire planet.

GOLD was essential in identifying these changes because of its ability to take images of an area at 15-minute intervals. When we were relying on LEO satellites for observation of the upper atmosphere, we could only generate an image every 12 to 24 hours. A lot can change in that time, and you lose the ability to see it changing and identify what’s happening and why.

Because of GOLD, we were able to sit there and watch things develop and see how the upper atmosphere changed.

GSR: Why are these new reports and findings important for NASA? Will they enable us to better predict things that could impact daily life on Earth? Are there impacts of these events that could be felt by civilians?

Dr. Richard Eastes: The May geomagnetic storm event was significant and impactful. But it wasn’t the most significant storm that our Earth has experienced. Back in 1859, the Earth experienced the Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history. It was 10 times the size of the May event.

The Carrington Event impacted the Internet of the day – the telegraph system. In fact, I even heard stories of telegraph stations catching fire as a result. Imagine what a solar storm like that could do to our modern, technology-reliant society.

We learned from the Carrington Event. We were able to more accurately predict the May solar storm event, and we were able to prepare for it. We were prepared enough that it didn’t cause a significant number of serious problems.

It’s important that we see the effects, how things are changing, and how the Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, because that’s where a lot of the currents are flowing. Seeing what happens in the upper atmosphere in advance of an event like this, and during an event like this, allows us to more accurately predict future events. We’ll identify the precursors and be able to prepare for an event. We’ll also be able to more accurately predict the severity of an event.

The more we observe with missions like GOLD, the more we can build models that enable us to predict the frequency and severity of solar storms and geomagnetic storm events. Much like how predicting a hurricane and its path enables us to evacuate and prepare an area, these models will enable us to identify when a geomagnetic storm is coming, and how serious it will be, so we can prepare accordingly.

Feature image: Bands of colorful airglow are visible above the limb of the Earth in this artist’s depiction of GOLD on the SES-14 satellite. (Courtesy NASA GSFC)

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The future space environment will need to be more resilient and capable of responding to an evolving set of threats, challenges and U.S. Government requirements. Industry experts, political and military leaders as well as pundits have been saying this for years – and with good reason. The ability to sustain operations, especially in the face of capable adversaries, is critically important to our national security.  The commercial satellite communications industry has been, and will be, an important partner in that effort.

As we review our third year of The Government Satellite Report, these themes resonate through some of our top stories.

Bold steps
2017 ushered in another wave of innovative and paradigm-challenging efforts.  With commercial capabilities quickly outpacing dated programs of record, the government began to take steps towards laying plans for a more secure and resilient satellite communications infrastructure.  U.S. Strategic Command’s General Hyten and U.S. Air Force Space Command’s General Raymond established and evolved a Space Enterprise Vision that includes COMSATCOM as a key component of U.S. national security in space.

A key component of this vision is the  Wideband Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to satisfy the military’s future wideband communications requirements. The AoA is leveraging the intent of the Space Enterprise Vision to determine how to develop an integrated satellite architecture that combines both military satellites and COMSATCOM services. This architecture will undoubtedly deliver advanced applications by making next-generation Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) High Throughput Satellite (HTS) commercial technologies readily available for government and military operations.

Along with the AoA effort, leaders in Congress and the Pentagon debated the potential benefits of a separate branch of the military dedicated to space. Congress concluded 2017 by providing sweeping new guidance and authorities to the Department of Defense regarding the oversight of the wider space enterprise and more specifically, the procurement of commercial satellite communications.  Implementing those authorities will be another exciting activity  we’ll track closely in 2018.

2017 ushered in another evolution in how and what type of commercial satellite services the U.S. Government will pursue. 2017 also saw the rise of other government trends that I believe will continue and grow in 2018, and beyond.

High Throughput and Low Latency Applications
MEO and GEO HTS satellites played an increasingly essential role for the U.S. Government in 2017. SES Space and Defense delivered nearly 5 Gigabits per second of managed MEO services supporting over 13 sites globally to government customers ranging from the Department of Defense (DoD) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). We see an ever-increasing demand from the U.S. Government for expanded high throughput, low latency capabilities and the mission applications enabled by those services.

Continued Use of Hosted Payloads
Last year we also saw the continued, successful use of hosted payloads by the federal government. In 2017, SES satellites were chosen to host a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) payload for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Global-Scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) payload for NASA. The continued success of these hosted payload programs has provided validation for hosted payloads as an economical and efficient alternative to launching an entire dedicated satellite for the same mission. I believe that we will see more innovation in how the U.S. Government pursues hosted payload opportunities on commercial satellites in 2018 and beyond.

CS3 and Beyond
As of October 2017, the COMSATCOM industry will be able to expand its services through the General Services Administration (GSA) Complex Commercial SATCOM Solutions (CS3) contract award.  Awardees, including SES Space and Defense will be able to provide capabilities through this indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle with a $2.5 Billion ceiling. CS3 will allow federal agencies to bid large, complex, custom satellite solutions for the next ten years exclusively among its 22 industry teams. We expect a lot more COMSATCOM opportunities to be released under CS3 than its predecessor, CS2 – including services that will provide high throughput and low latency to the government end-user.

2017 was an exciting year in SATCOM and it set the stage for a significant evolution in how the federal government and the United States military address their satellite communications requirements. The COMSATCOM industry,and SES Space and Defense in particular ,is excited by what lies ahead in space.  We are prepared and committed to helping the government overcome the challenges it faces, to include providing a more resilient, disaggregated and distributed satellite communications architecture.

The Government Satellite Report remains committed to bringing you the latest satellite trends, breaking news and insightful interviews with government and satellite industry leaders in 2018.  But first, here is a look at some of the articles that our readers found most compelling in 2017. Thank you for being a loyal reader.

To learn more about the satellite trends and issues that dominated headlines in 2017, download the Government Satellite Year in Review by clicking HERE.

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What, exactly, has been happening? Let’s take a look at some of the headlines:

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Launch Brings Humanity One Giant Leap Closer To Mars
If going to the Moon is redundant and boring to people, maybe we have to set our sights out a bit further. What if we went to Mars? That’s exactly what this week’s incredibly historic and significant launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy Rocket could enable in time.

This article by Forbes does an excellent job of laying out the challenges that Mars and other deep space exploration creates for the scientific community. It also lays out just why the Falcon Heavy launch was so significant.

To sum up, getting people onto Mars would take preparation and sending a lot of equipment and supplies in advance. Previous rockets and space shuttles have been powerful and capable of carrying large payloads, but they’ve been extremely expensive and can only be used once. Falcon Heavy changed all of that. It’s a fraction of the cost of previous rockets, and its boosters can be recovered and reused.

Is this week’s test launch – which achieved low-Earth orbit – immediately going to enable us to send men to Mars? No. But it’s an important first step in overcoming the cost challenges that Mars missions have always faced, and an exciting development for the future of space flight and exploration. It also flung a pretty rocking car into space…so that’s pretty awesome.

NASA’s GOLD Mission Powers on for First Time After Eventful Launch
Not to be outdone by an upstart commercial space flight company, the original founder of the space industry – NASA – did something pretty incredible in the past few weeks as well. NASA launched a hosted payload designed to help gauge weather and temperatures in an important region of the atmosphere influenced by weather events on Earth and in space.

What was truly exciting and revolutionary about this payload was that it wasn’t aboard a NASA satellite. Instead, the payload was carried to space onboard SES-14, a commercial satellite owned and operated by COMSATCOM provider (and Government Satellite Report sponsor) SES.

By launching GOLD as a hosted payload onboard a commercial space craft, NASA was able to execute its mission at a fraction of the cost by effectively hitching a ride to space. That strategy was validated when the GOLD payload was turned on – albeit temporarily – following launch and everything appeared to be functioning.

Click the link above to the Space.com article to learn more about GOLD and its timeline to start science operations. Additional information about GOLD is available HERE.

Falcon 9 soars into space with GovSat 1
And not to be outdone by NASA, Space X made news again this past week when it reused a rocket to launch another exciting and revolutionary satellite – GovSat-1.

Designed exclusively for the government and defense community, GovSat-1 is the first satellite of GovSat, which is a joint venture between the Government of Luxembourg and SES.

GovSat-1 was designed for dual use to support both defense and civil security applications, including mobile and fixed communications. It is a multi-mission satellite that offers X-band and Military Ka-band capacity. The spacecraft will provide up to six high-powered and fully steerable spot beams, as well as an advanced Global X-band beam.

GovSat-1 is the first commercial satellite designed to only carry government and defense communications. The fact that it made its way into space onboard a flight-proven rocket just adds to its status as a history-making satellite.

For additional information about GovSat-1, download a brochure by clicking HERE.

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NASA GOLD will observe Earth’s space weather in a very important region, where the part of the atmosphere that is ionized by radiation from the sun –  called the ionosphere – is coupled with the unionized atmosphere, which is often referred to as the thermosphere.

<Watch the latest GOLD video courtesy of NASA by clicking here>

While much has been written about the GOLD science mission and its contributions to better understanding how the weather of the Ionosphere impacts radio frequency transmissions and low earth orbiting satellites that use this region, little has been shared about GOLD’s arduous journey from manufacturing to orbit. That’s a shame, since the process of building, mounting and then launching a payload aboard a commercial satellite is an interesting one – and one that we’re going to shed some more light on right now.

GOLD is notable in part because of the organizations working in concert to make the entire program a success. The mission represents the first time universities and a commercial spacecraft operator will team up to enable a NASA science program. GOLD is being developed and operated by a team comprised of NASA, the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), the University of Central Florida, Airbus Defence and Space, and SES. Each of these organizations played a role in taking GOLD from concept to reality.

Payload Integration & Testing

The NASA GOLD hosted payload was completed by LASP in late 2016 and delivered it to the Airbus satellite integration facility in Toulouse, France, in January 2017.  Airbus is SES’ contractor to build and deliver GOLD’s host spacecraft, SES-14. After assembling the main components of SES-14, Airbus integrated GOLD on the Earth-facing deck of the satellite in April.

Throughout the spring, summer and fall, SES-14 and GOLD underwent a series of tests to verify that the satellite met requirements for SES-14’s communications mission and to verify both SES-14 and GOLD met mission compatibility requirements established early in the program.  Both SES-14 and GOLD passed with flying colors.

SES-14 and GOLD underwent final preparations in Toulouse in December and were transported from Toulouse to the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana, aboard a contracted Antonov 124 aircraft on December 22.  SES-14 and GOLD are currently being prepared for a January 25 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket, by SES’ launch service provider for this mission, Arianespace.

Getting into Orbit

The Ariane 5 rocket will place SES-14 and GOLD into a transfer orbit. Over the next few months, Airbus will raise SES-14 to a geostationary orbit before handing off operations to SES. After a few weeks of on-orbit testing and checkout, SES-14 will commence its communications mission at 45.7° West over Brazil, where is will serve video, mobility, and other customers over Europe, the transatlantic region and the Americas.

Once SES-14 is operational, the LASP team will commission GOLD for its science mission, which will begin a few weeks after GOLD commissioning activities commence.

As a geostationary satellite, SES-14 will provide GOLD a vantage point to constantly look at the same region of the Earth. GOLD’s sensor will have a 30 minute cadence – observing the disk and limb of the earth every 30 minutes. It’s the first time that NASA can study the ionosphere and thermosphere from a geostationary orbit. Previous missions have been in low earth orbit, where the cadence to revisit the same region is once per day.

Ready for Transmission

From its orbit, GOLD will transmit its science data using one of SES-14’s communications channels to an SES teleport at Woodbine, MD.  From there, SES will route the data to LASP’s GOLD Science Operations Center for initial processing.

The data delivered by GOLD will be a series of images – one produced every 30 minutes – which can be played as a movie. These images contain spectral information, multiple wavelengths or colors, as well as spatial information. Overall, this data will provide key information about how Earth’s upper atmosphere connects to the dynamic and complex system of space that fills our solar system.

To watch the launch of SES-14 and the GOLD hosted payload, click HERE.  To learn more about the GOLD hosted payload, download this GOLD & ICON infographic to learn about the benefits of hosted payloads or the whitepaper “What is a Hosted Payload?” Be sure to watch the launch live here: www.arianespace.com on January 25, 2018.

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