DENVER (CBS4) - The first images from NOAA's next-generation weather satellite are in and they're absolutely stunning.
GOES-R launched from Florida on Nov. 19 after a brief delay due to Hurricane Matthew. Just 10 days later the spacecraft's name was changed to GOES-16 after it successfully reached a geostationary orbit approximately 22,000 miles above Earth's equator.
After several weeks of testing NASA released the first high-resolution images captured by the spacecraft on Jan. 15, providing a level of detail never seen before.
GOES-16 can scan the planet five-times faster than current satellites and it has four times greater resolution.
It can provide a full disk image of the Earth every 15 minutes, one of the continental U.S. every five minutes, and it can look at small-scale features such as hurricanes and wildfires every 30 seconds.
The satellite uses 16 spectral channels to creates images.
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