GOES-R Series News | 2025

    January

  • January 21, 2025: Earth from Orbit: NOAA Satellites Track Raging Wildfires in California

    GOES turns 50 image

    NOAA satellites closely monitoring wildfires burning in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The first blazes erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, and quickly exploded in size and intensity, prompting widespread evacuation orders. The destructive wildfires have destroyed thousands of structures and claimed the lives of at least 25 people according to reporting by local authorities. GOES-18 (GOES West) monitored the fires in near real-time, measured the intensity, tracked the spread and movement of smoke.

  • January 14, 2025: NOAA Celebrates 50 Years of GOES Satellites.

    GOES turns 50 image

    In 2025, NOAA is celebrating 50 years of its heralded Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite program, known as GOES. For five decades, NOAA and NASA have partnered to advance NOAA satellite observations from geostationary orbit. GOES are our sentinels in the sky: keeping constant watch for severe weather and environmental hazards on Earth and dangerous space weather. As NOAA celebrates the long legacy of the GOES, we continue to rely on these satellites for short-term forecasts of hazardous weather, detection and monitoring of environmental phenomena like wildfires, smoke, volcanic ash, dust storms and fog, and warnings of approaching space weather that can disrupt communication and navigation systems, disrupt power grids, damage satellites in space and expose astronauts to harmful radiation.