The GOES satellite system is managed and operated by NOAA’s office of National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services (NESDIS). Federal agencies involved in remote environmental data collection like the U.S.  Geological Survey and the Army Corps of Engineers use the system to collect many kinds of data, including data collected by those involved in fish and wildlife tracking. If you are affiliated with a federal agency, you have access to this important asset. If you are with a state or other local agency, or a learning institution, you may be able to utilize the GOES satellite if a cooperating federal agency will sponsor you.

 The GOES satellite is equipped with cameras and is continually sending pictures of the earth back to NOAA. This data is seen by millions on local weather broadcasts. However, the satellite has numerous channels available for binary coded data to be received, and then sent back to earth. Every 3 or 4 hours, a one minute window is available to the user for data transmission (smaller, fractured minute windows are now increasingly being used). At the specified time, the ground-based GOES transmitter will be activated and send a data stream up to one of two (GOES East or West) geostationary satellites. The satellite captures the data and then re-transmits it. That transmission is received in Wallops Island, VA at NOAA’s Direct Readout Ground Receive Station, where the data is decoded and saved by computers. Users can then dial-in to the mainframe computers and download their data as often as they need. Also, there are commercially available Local Readout Ground Stations which only require a one meter parabolic antenna.