NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations

GOES Eclipse Schedules - Spring 2016

KOZ (KEEP OUT ZONE) / ECLIPSE
The GOES satellites encounter two periods, during the year, in which the satellites are in the Earth's shadow. Known as the Eclipse (ECL) season, these periods require the spacecraft to be totally dependent on onboard batteries for a maximum of 72 minutes daily. Eclipse's occur from approximately late February to mid April and from late August to mid October.

GOES-13/14/15 - There is a significant risk of the sun light directly entering the scanners and causing degraded products, as the spacecraft enters and leaves the Earth's shadow, requiring a special algorithm to be applied to the Imager products.  In some cases shifting or cancelling the frame is necessary. This is known as the "Stray Light Zone (SLZ)". The seasonal charts describe the GOES-East and GOES-West Imager and Sounder scan frames that are canceled or shifted, due to SLZ.


Seasonal Charts:   Spring 2016 Schedule
GOES Spring Schedules (Excel file xls or xlsx)

GOES-West  –  GOES-15   (02/22/2016 - 4/23/2016)
  • Routine Imager (HTML)
    (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Routine Sounder (HTML)
    (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Both Imager and Sounder (Excel file xls or xlsx)


  • Previous Eclipse Schedules
  • Fall 2015
  • Spring 2015
  • Fall 2014
  • Spring 2014
  • GOES-East  –  GOES-13   (02/26/2016 - 4/23/2016)
  • Routine Imager (HTML)
      (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Routine Sounder (HTML)
      (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Both Imager and Sounder (Excel file xls or xlsx)


  • Full Disk Scan During Eclipse
    There will be no Full Disk Coverage for GOES East or GOES West
    this eclipse season since we will not have an outage of more
    than 15 minutes.

    Spring 2016 Solar RFI predicted times

    Wallops, Fairbanks and SOCC receiving antennas may experience periods of Solar RFI as predicted below. Solar RFI can cause loss of telemetry lock and command capability. The GOES-East and GOES-West command schedules will include comments for the predicted time periods. SEM Calibrations for GOES-NIP should be canceled during this period.

    Operations Crew should monitor range data on OATS after the RFI period is over. If OATS is not receiving range data in the nominal 15 minute interval a ground calibration on the SPS is required. The operations crew should find the earliest opportunity in the schedule and request the SPS operator to perform a ground calibration on the SPS during this hole in the schedule. After the ground calibration is complete, verify the next nominal 15 minute range is sent to OATS. Notify INR engineering of the missing range data.



    SOLAR RFI PREDICTED TIMES FOR SPRING 2016
    SPACECRAFT DATE TIME STATION OPERATIONAL IMPACT
    GOES-13 MAR - 8 MAR 1704 - l 716Z WALLOPS SD, GVAR, T&C, EMWIN, LRIT, WEFAX, DCS, DCPR, SAR, MDL
    GOES-14 1 MAR - 7 MAR 1920 - 1932Z WALLOPS T&C, EMWIN, MDL
    GOES-15 2 MAR - 8 MAR
    24 FEB - 2 MAR
    2132 - 2144Z
    2105 - 2117Z
    WALLOPS
    FAIRBANK
    SD, GVAR, T&C, EMWIN, LRIT, WEFAX, DCS, DCPR, SAR, MDL