Today was a beautiful day and I was fortunate enough to have been asked along on a little field trip outside the office. I went with my new bosses to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition station. (In alphabet soup terms, NOAA’s Fairbanks NESDIS CDA.)
The secure station is outside town and you must be or be with a NOAA employee to enter the facility. It is one of only a couple of these stations that collect data and images from environmental satellites and constantly beams said data to various users around the globe. Many depend on this data, from the Department of Defense right down to your local weatherman.
We got a tour of the facility, including the buildings on the compound and an up close look at the enormous satellites located on the surrounding hills.
The largest one is 26 meters (over 85 feet) across.
Oh and just FYI, driving around the greater Fairbanks area, sometimes you see these giant golf ball looking things, and today I found out that those are called radomes (a.k.a. ray domes), and they are just basically a protective shell for the satellite housed inside.
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