Twelve days after launch, NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-P (GOES-P) reached its proper orbit and was renamed GOES-15, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said Friday in a statement, Xinhua reported.
The latest weather satellite will complete its checkout in mid August and be stored in-orbit, ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel.
"The NASA team has done an excellent job and the spacecraft performance has been near perfect. Reaching the proper orbit marks a significant milestone, but we still have a lot of work to complete," stated Andre Dress, the NASA GOES Deputy Project Manager. "We remain focused on the tasks at hand and look forward to complete mission success."
Since GOES-P was launched on-board a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket on March 4, the satellite has undergone five orbit raising maneuvers before arriving at its checkout longitude of 90 degrees west, where it orbits at approximately 22,000 miles (35,398 km) above the Earth's surface.
NASA engineers and controllers deployed the Solar Array on March 17 and they will turn on the Imager and Sounder on March 23. The Imager is expected to capture the first visible image on April 5.
GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft to be launched in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. With two operational satellites, they provide weather observations that cover over 50 percent of the Earth's surface.