"Like High-Definition from the heavens"

From USA Today:

The USA's newest weather satellite — GOES-16 — has sent back its first images of our planet, federal scientists announced Monday.

The photos are of weather and the Earth in high detail — at four times the image resolution of existing spacecraft. It's like "high-definition from the heavens," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

GOES stands for geostationary operational environmental satellite.

“This is such an exciting day for NOAA," said Stephen Volz, the director of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. "One of our GOES-16 scientists compared this to seeing a newborn baby’s first pictures — it’s that exciting for us.

“These images come from the most sophisticated technology ever flown in space to predict severe weather on Earth," he said.

And it's fast: The satellite can scan the entire Western Hemisphere in just five minutes. "It will revolutionize how severe weather forecasting is done," said meteorologist Ryan Maue of WeatherBell Analytics.

The school-bus-size satellite, known as "GOES-R" when it launched in November and now by its new name "GOES-16," is in a "geosynchronous" orbit of the Earth. This means it hovers in the same spot above the planet, about 22,000 miles above the equator. It moves as the Earth rotates.

Read more here.