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The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released some bad news today: the GOES-17 weather satellite that launched almost two months ago has a cooling problem that could endanger the majority of the satellite's value.
GOES-17 is the second of a new generation of weather satellite to join NOAA's orbital fleet. Its predecessor is covering the US East Coast, with GOES-17 meant to become "GOES-West." While providing higher-resolution images of atmospheric conditions, it also tracks fires, lightning strikes, and solar behavior. It's important that NOAA stays ahead of the loss of dying satellites by launching new satellites that ensure no gap in global coverage ever occurs.
The various instruments onboard the satellite have been put through their paces to make sure everything is working properly before it goes into official operation. Several weeks ago, it became clear that the most important instrument—the Advanced Baseline Imager—had a cooling problem. This instrument images the Earth at a number of different wavelengths, including the visible portion of the spectrum as well as infrared wavelengths that help detect clouds and water vapor content.
The infrared wavelengths are currently offline. The satellite has to be actively cooled for these precision instruments to function, and the infrared wavelengths only work if the sensor stays below 60K—that's about a cool -350°F. The cooling system is only reaching that temperature 12 hours a day. The satellite can still produce visible spectrum images, as well as the solar and lightning monitoring, but it's not a glorious next-gen weather satellite without that infrared data.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/newest-noaa-weather-satellite-suffers-critical-malfunction/
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Sunday May 27 2018, @02:38PM
At work we had to re-seal some of the RF modules that went into these satellites after the last guy somehow managed to get metal shavings in one of them after hermetically sealing them. They had to de-lid the units, clean, inspect, retest, we re-sealed them, and back for a year long calibration (And you wonder why their launches were delayed). There was a big deal when that crew rolled in. They even re-painted some of the shop to make everything look as clean and neat as possible. A crew of six engineers came with various instruments to inspect our equipment to ensure it was satisfactory (we passed of course). Four engineers then stood watch over our operators shoulder as he resealed each piece. They did the final inspection, packed their modules into individual hard cases and went back to wherever (think it was aerojet rocketdyne). Not sure if this incident was part of GOES 16 or 17.