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Date Announced: 07 Sep 2017
Helping to Take Weather Forecasting to New Heights
WESTFORD, Massachusetts – September 7, 2017– High-performance optical filters from Materion Corporation’s (NYSE: MTRN) Precision Optics business, equipped on a Harris Corporation imaging instrument on the nation’s next-generation weather satellite, GOES-16, are poised to serve a crucial and expanded role in helping meteorologists pinpoint and track an area of gathering storms in much greater detail than allowed by previous technology.
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-16 satellite is declared operational in November, it will have completed a twelve-month engineering checkout and instrument validation and moved into its slotted position 22,300 miles above the equator. There, it will scan the entire continental United States and monitor areas most vulnerable to tornadoes, floods, land-falling tropical storms and hurricanes.
Harris Corporation’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) digital camera collects imagery at the resolution of one-tenth of a square mile and provides the key instrument in a payload described by NOAA as the most sophisticated technology ever flown in space to predict severe weather on Earth. It is delivering sharper, more defined images at a resolution four times greater and five times the speed of its GOES predecessor.
Materion Precision Optics plays a key role in ABI’s ability to gather substantially more and higher-quality data, thanks in part to the 16 spectral bands or filters provided by the Company. Each of the spectral bands collect data from a different wavelength across the visible and infrared (thermal) spectrum. The different wavelengths detected provide information about particular features of Earth’s surface or the atmosphere. Previous GOES technology was limited to five spectral bands, and were not viable at night.
Commented Michael Newell, Ph.D., President, Materion Precision Coatings, “Materion has had a front seat position in a wide range of space applications for decades. Our role with Harris Corporation onboard the GOES-16 is very gratifying as we are helping to unlock higher value weather information continuously day or night with the full array of near-infrared and infrared wavelength filters. Better quality data will lead to earlier warnings, and better decision making and preparation on the ground, ultimately saving lives and property.”
Materion Corporation is headquartered in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The Company, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, supplies highly engineered advanced enabling materials to global markets. Our unique product portfolio includes high performance alloys, beryllium products, clad metal strip, composite metals, ceramics, inorganic chemicals, microelectronics packaging materials, precision optics, thin film coatings and thin film deposition materials.
E-mail: susan.doughtie@materion.com
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