CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The nation’s newest weather satellite, launched less than three months ago, has a serious cooling problem that could affect the quality of its pictures.
The trouble is with the GOES-17 satellite’s premier instrument for taking images of hurricanes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions and other natural calamities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. The imager’s infrared sensors aren’t getting properly cooled.
Experts are scrambling to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. Officials expect it will take at least a few months to figure out.
…
“As you can imagine, doing this remotely from 22,000 miles below only looking at the on-orbit data is a challenge,” said Steve Volz, head of NOAA’s satellite and information service.
….
Volz told reporters the trouble was discovered three weeks ago during the satellite’s routine checkout in orbit. The satellite was launched by NASA on March 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“This is a serious problem,” Volz said. The infrared channels “are important elements of our observing requirement, and if they are not functioning fully, it is a loss.”
The problem is with 13 of the 14 channels in the infrared and near infrared, which are meant to operate at around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius). The imager’s cooling system — which uses propolyne — is not maintaining that frigid temperature during the warmer part of each orbit, and so the channels aren’t working well about half the time.
From the mission page:
MAY 23, 2018: SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATE GOES-17 ADVANCED BASELINE IMAGER PERFORMANCE ISSUE
The GOES-R Program is currently addressing a performance issue with the cooling system encountered during commissioning of the GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument. The cooling system is an integral part of the ABI and did not start up properly during the on-orbit checkout.
A team of experts from NOAA, NASA, the ABI contractor team and industry are investigating the issue and pursuing multiple courses of possible corrective actions. The issue affects the infrared and near-infrared channels on the instrument. The visible channels of the ABI are not impacted.
NOAA’s operational geostationary constellation — GOES-16, operating as GOES-East, GOES-15, operating as GOES-West and GOES-14, operating as the on-orbit spare — is healthy and monitoring weather across the nation each day, so there is no immediate impact from this performance issue.
If efforts to restore the cooling system are unsuccessful, alternative concepts and modes will be considered to maximize the operational utility of the ABI for NOAA’s National Weather Service and other customers. An update will be provided as new information becomes available.
https://www.goes-r.gov/mission/news.html
I’m pretty sure somebody somewhere will figure out a way to blame ‘climate change’ for this. – Anthony
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Maybe they could use dry ice (Frozen Co2) 🙂
“New GOES-17 weather satellite has a cooling problem – may be ‘a loss’” See it’s all because of global warming. /sarc
“He’s dead Jim.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxfi7XMS8pw
Well I see no evidence that it wasn’t aliens.
But could be a dent in the pipes or paint chip on the radiator (assuming it is painted with a special emissive paint), or tarnish, or Chinese manufactured coolant. Probably aliens.
Ruling out all other possible causes at this point, it was aliens or possibly global warming.
The Russians did it!
Another reason to build a good wall.
GOES-17 is a ‘no goes’?
Space is an unforgiving environment and all human constructions have intrinsic defects. Given that GOES-17 is a duplicate of the fully operational on-orbit GOES-16, there is a high probability of a component manufacturing defect or a defect induced in assembly. To err is human….
If only America had… I don’t know… like a shuttle or something they could send up to work on things…
Maybe they can get the Russians to take a look?
I wonder if it’s REALLY something wrong or just that the IR sensors aren’t showing global warming and so ‘must be malfunctioning’?
The space shuttle thing was answered about 5 times already, MarkMcD – it was only designed for low Earth orbit.
That’s about 35,000km below the geostationary orbit of GOES:
And there is already a functioning copy of the satellite with all IR channels working, with near-live images available for anyone to see:
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/
(all 16 channels available under “product” drop-down menu)
It should be renamed the WENT-17.
Thought space was cold: 3 K or 5 K. Just leave the detectors on the back porch overnight.
So what’s the problem?
Oh, space at this orbital distance is 1,368 W/m^2, S-B BB 394 K/ 121 C/ 250 F.
“So, what would the earth be like without an atmosphere?
The average solar constant is 1,368 W/m^2 with an S-B BB temperature of 394 K or 21 C higher than the boiling point of water under sea level atmospheric pressure, which would no longer exist. The oceans would boil away removing the giga-tons of pressure that keeps the molten core in place. The molten core would push through the floor flooding the surface with dark magma changing both emissivity and albedo. With no atmosphere a steady rain of meteorites would pulverize the surface to dust same as the moon. The earth would be much like the moon with a similar albedo (0.12) and large swings in surface temperature from lit to dark sides. No clouds, no vegetation, no snow, no ice a completely different albedo, certainly not the current 30%. No molecules mean no convection, advection, conduction, latent energy and surface absorption/radiation would be anybody’s guess. Whatever the conditions of the earth would be without an atmosphere, it is most certainly NOT 240 W/m^2 and 255 K.
The alleged 33 C difference is between a) an average surface temperature composed of thousands of WAGs that must be +/- entire degrees and b) a theoretical temperature calculation 100 km away that cannot even be measured and c) all with an intact and fully functioning atmosphere.”
BTW notice that IR instruments measure TEMPERATURES by comparing to calibration sinks and sources and NOT power fluxes. Power fluxes, W/m^2, are INFERRED by ASSUMING BB 1.0 emissivity conditions which explains why the SurfRad IR power flux loops are complete trash.
I made this comment/observation to Apogee, Kipp Zonen and Eppley and so far no objections.
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
http://writerbeat.com/articles/19972-Space-Hot-or-Cold-and-RGHE
Probably should not have used heatpipes bought on Aliexpress.