GOES SXR Data:

A cornerstone of modern solar flare monitoring is the multi-satellite Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) mission, which collects soft X-ray (SXR) real-time data for space weather forecasting. The GOES mission has been continuously monitoring the Sun in SXR for over five decades, with 19 satellites launched to date. To ensure continual data coverage, at least two operational GOES satellites are always in position serving as the primary observer and the backup. This dual-satellite configuration decreases the risk of gaps in data coverage (caused by e.g., the daily eclipse of each satellite's line of sight to the Sun by the Earth, which can last up to approximately 70 minutes). Should a gap arise, continuity can be maintained by integrating the "good quality" flagged measurements from the primary and secondary satellites into a unified record.

Generally, two types of GOES data are available: operational products used by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) and science-quality data. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) guidelines, science-quality data should be used when available. This preference is due to the inclusion of recovered missing data in SWPC real-time operational products, accurate time stamps, high-time-resolution data, one-minute and daily average irradiances, quality flags, flare lists, event summaries, flare location information, and corrections for previously applied SWPC scaling factors. Science-quality data is now available for the most recent satellites. To access the data and find out which data sets have been reprocessed to date, visit

We examined the period from 01 January 2018 to 22 August 2025, during which the GOES-R series satellites were operational, providing data in true physical units of W/m2. On the eastern side, GOES-16 served as the primary satellite until its replacement by GOES-19 in April 2025. On the eastern side (Atlantic), GOES-16 served as the primary satellite until its replacement by GOES-19 in April 2025. On the western side (Pacific), GOES-17 was the primary satellite from February 2019 until January 2023, after which GOES-18 assumed that role. This period of study corresponds to 2,757 calendar days, with eleven days excluded due to missing satellite observations. For each day, the primary GOES satellite was used as the baseline. Whenever intervals were affected by data gaps or flagged as low quality, the corresponding segments from the secondary satellite are substituted, provided valid measurements are available. Over the study period, 417 days relied on data from only a single operational satellite. After substitution, any timestamps still carrying low-quality flags were discarded. As a result, most daily series contain fewer than the nominal 86,400 one-second samples. Moreover, 15 days with fewer than twelve hours of valid data were removed entirely.