File:KSC-05-S-00292 (ksc 081505 goesn dress 12).webm

English: BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: Next question is from Ron in Minneapolis, and he asks: 'How long after launch does NASA turn over the satellite to NOAA, and what has to happen before the handover occurs?' ANDRE' DRESS: Okay, the GOES spacecraft is launched, and after about 24 days, it's actually handed over to NASA. And then, at that point, we call it, it goes into a post-launch checkout period in which NASA will take and turn things on, turn the instruments on, characterize, calibrate all those instruments, and that period takes about six months, okay, until we're sure that the spacecraft is actually doing what it was designed to do and at that point, we would turn it over to NOAA in a storage mode, and NOAA would operate it after we've, you know, given them all the documentation and how the spacecraft's performing, all the training and stuff like that, they would take it over and operate it for the rest of its life. BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: Okay, thank you.