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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: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:54PM (2 children)
When this story broke, I noticed that most news outlets had fair-to-good headlines, while others (like arstechnica) chose clickbaity showmanship with headlines like:
A "critical malfunction" calls up images of a dead satellite that doesn't respond to ping. Or one that burns up in a fiery spectacle of failure. Or explodes. Or threatens the Earth's continued survival. Etc.
That isn't the problem with this one. It's working properly, except that for part of its orbit, some of the instruments don't return data and others have limited range, because of a cooling problem. And some instruments are working fine.
Sure, that's not what NOAA intended, but it didn't die, go nova, fall into the sun, or anything like that.
Some more informative, less clickbaity headlines:
Popular Mechanics: NOAA's New Weather Satellite Has a Cooling Problem [popularmechanics.com]
ABC News: New US weather satellite can't keep cool, could hurt photos [go.com]
Science Magazine: Cooling failure threatens NOAA's newest weather satellite [sciencemag.org]
CBS News: NOAA studies "serious problem" with new GOES weather satellite [cbsnews.com]
Several more: Google News search: NOAA GOES satellite problem [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 27 2018, @06:53PM (1 child)
It absolutely is a critical malfunction.
NOAA are denied the use of arguable the most important instrument except at night, but storms build faster in the daytime due to solar input.
I would say Ars just refused to sugar coat it like the rest of the fawning press.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by requerdanos on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:06PM
Your differing opinion is appreciated and noted.