NESDIS provides regular updates to the orbital status of the GOES satellites. Here is a sample listing:
DATE: 10 MAY 2002(J-130)
SUBJECT: NAVIGATION SUMMARY
(STORAGE) (STORAGE) (WEST) (STORAGE) (EAST)
GOES-12a GOES-11b GOES-10c GOES-9d GOES-8e
POSITION 89.952 101.130 135.166 105.746 75.319
DRIFT RATE 0.028W 0.019E 0.028W 0.007W 0.040E
FUEL REMAINING 82.359 95.142 33.158 20.324 9.409
OXIDIZER REMAING 140.110 153.737 58.808 30.962 13.780
INCLINATION 0.169 0.327 0.323 0.058 0.093
MANEUVER DATE -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
MANEUVER TYPE -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
PROPELLANT COST -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
GOES-7g GOES-3g MET-7h MET-6h MET-5h
POSITION 172.713 107.545 0.227 350.938 62.949
DRIFT RATE 0.040W 0.014W 0.017W 0.003E 0.014W
FUEL REMAINING 6.305ef 2.173e 21.981 8.664 5.268
INCLINATION 7.075 13.282 0.278 1.978 4.976
SPIN RATE 100.711 100.411 99.832 99.872 99.778
MANEUVER DATE -------- -------- ------- -------- --------
MANEUVER TYPE -------- -------- ------- -------- --------
FUEL COST -------- -------- ------- -------- --------
COMMENTS:
(a) GOES-12 data propagated from OATS orbit epoch 01/353 18:00 UTC.
Fuel and oxidizer remaining are estimates after ZAP 1 01/354.
(b) GOES-11 data propagated from OATS orbit epoch 02/121 06:00 UTC.
Fuel and oxidizer remaining are estimates after RESPIN/ZAP2 01/164.
(c) GOES-10 data propagated from OATS orbit epoch 02/130 06:00 UTC.
Fuel and oxidizer remaining are estimates after EW 21 02/113.
(d) GOES-9 data propagated from OATS orbit epoch 02/019 00:00 UTC.
Fuel and oxidizer remaining are estimates after ZAP 3 02/017.
(e) GOES-8 data propagated from OATS orbit epoch 02/130 12:00 UTC.
Fuel and oxidizer remaining are estimates after EW 40 02/120.
(f) Predicted value. GOES-7 fuel after EW 02/106. GOES-3 fuel after
REOR on 99/272.
(g) Fuel uncertainty +/- 5 kilograms - no N/S maneuvers.
(h) GOES-3, and -7 data propagated from orbit epoch 02/105 00:00 UTC
and 02/106 00:00 UTC respectively.
(i) METEOSAT-5, -6 AND -7 data from orbit epoch 02/126 00:00 UTC.
(j) GOES-2 was deorbited with 6 Station-Keeping Maneuvers from May 1-5,
2001. It will no longer be updated in this document.
Definition of terms:
SK -- Stationkeeping POSITION -- Degs W Long
NS -- Inclination change DRIFT RATE -- Degs/Day
REOR -- Spin axis reorientation SPIN RATE -- RPM
EW -- In-plane station change FUEL,OXID,PROP -- Kilograms
NESDIS provides a GOES Earth Location Users Guide (ELUG). Two major sites for GOES technical information are the Office of Satellite Operations (OSO) and the Office of Satellite Development (OSD). They reorganize their web sites frequently, so you will have to click-search for the information you want.
An easy thing to do is to use our "goes.nav" lat-long coordinate files within the sectors that we serve from GOES-EAST and GOES-WEST. The associated "readme.nav" files tell you how to interpret these "goes.nav" files.
NOAA provides two kinds of navigation information, both inside the raw GVAR data broadcasts.
The documentation for the algebraic orbit-attitude-projection solution is also avaialable from NOAA-NESDIS. There are FORTRAN routines for carrying out the projection algorithm listed in that image-navigation document. We don't have a digital copy of that document.
All we do have is the digital form of the FORTRAN routines that NOAA-NESDIS was actually using as of mid-October 1995 (but not the same code listed in the doucmentation). You can get a copy of the NESDIS mid-October 1995 FORTRAN version via anonymous ftp. If you want the entire distribution as a tar-ball, get it here.
To compile this FORTRAN, we made some adjustments and we have some advice:
1) The navigation FORTRAN code was made to work on a HP Unix workstation with the following modifications: ******************Shu Yang's Notes On 03/16/95 ************************ C In order to make this program work, I made the following minor C modifications: C 1) INCLUDE SYNTAX in main and all subroutines: C from $INCLUDE:'FILE.NAME' to INCLUDE 'FILE.NAME'. C 2) REAL-TO-INTEGER CONVERSION FUNCTION in function GATT: C from I=INT4(IR) to I=INT(IR). C 3) FORMAT SYNTAX in format lines 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, C 1700, 1800 and 1950: C from / to // between two data and adding ,/ at the end. C 4) SYNTAX in subroutine TIMEX: C from c to C for a comment line. C*********************************************************************** The above comments are at the very beginning of the main program. 2) As for the compiling error messages, only the first one generally makes sense. Many error messages are generated because the compiler has gone to a wrong track since it met the first error. In many cases, your correction of one error will erase quite a lot error messages. 3) When compiling this software, I made sure that a certain data type occupied the same storage space in different computers (e.g., 4 bytes for storage of a floating number). And when testing the software, I made sure that the data were read into the program correctly.
We have not seen any other information about GOES navigation on the net. Please let me know of any useful links you find.
Good luck.
Dennis.F.Chesters@nasa.gov