F
or ages, earthlings regarded lightning
as an indicator of godly wrath. To under-
stand what displeased a higher power,
you followed the damage from Thor’s
hammer strike, Raijin’s drumbeat, or the
javelins hurled down by Zeus.
Today scientists have their own God’s-
eye view of lightning, with instruments that orbit about
22,000 miles above the planet, monitoring nearly every
single strike that flashes across the Western Hemisphere.
Lightning, it turns out, is still an indicator: Increased electri-
cal activity in the atmosphere is a bellwether for the onset of
severe storms—a reflection of the damage inflicted not by
any god but, at least in part, by human-made climate change.
To be sure, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration has used a network of weather satellites to
track storms since the mid-1970s. But six years ago, engi-
neers at Lockheed Martin began assembling a new gen-
eration of four 6,000-pound weather satellites—known
as GOES, or Geostationary Operational Environmental
Satellites—with an array of instruments that can track
everything from plumes of volcanic ash to space weather.
In orbit, each satellite looks like an old-fashioned movie
camera pointed toward Earth, with a boom sticking out the
back (a device for measuring changes in the planet's mag-
netic field to study solar wind) and a massive solar panel
where you’d expect to see a film reel.In the place where
the lens would go is a device that picks up emissions from
oxygen molecules that get excited by the energy of an elec-
trical storm: a lightning detector.
The first of these new satellites was launched in 2016.
Within six months, it had collected more data than all 15
previous GOES satellites amassed over four decades. A sec-
ond new satellite went up in 2018, and the two have already
changed our understanding of lightning. Unlike weather
stations down on terra firma, these satellites have no trou-
ble watching electrical current zip between distant clouds.
Bolts of lightning, it turns out, have a far longer reach than
earthbound meteorologists ever realized. “That old phrase
about a ‘bolt from the blue’ can really happen,” says Pam
Sullivan, NOAA’s system program director for the new sat-
ellites. “Lightning from a storm can actually reach out and
strike ground that’s hundreds of kilometers away.”
Two more satellites will be launched in 2021 and 2024.
With all four in orbit, they’ll provide data that helps power
NASA and NOAA’s forecasting models. All told, the $10.8bil-
lion fleet could dramatically improve our ability to under-
stand severe weather—and stay safe on the ground during
megastorms. In December, photographer Christopher Payne
visited Lockheed Martin’s facility in the hills of Littleton,
Colorado, to capture their assembly.
DANIEL OBERHAUS (@DMOberhaus) is a staff writer at
wired. He wrote about the spaceflight company Spin-
Launch in issue 27.11.
