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Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

spaceweather.gov

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Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#71

Post by m4rtink »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #32
pphysch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should rebrand it as "Praise the Sun" mode. We are sorry, GOES-19 is temporarily unavailable during a planned solar worship break of indefinite length.

The cool thing about geostationary orbits is that they're far enough out that they get 24/7 sun (Except around the equinoxes). We could easily fit a solar worship break in the schedule in between imaging and momentum dumps.

Sure, GEO sats are almost always in full sunlight. But still, if you loose orientation, you could end up with the solar panel wings pointing in the wrong direction or overheating parts of the satellite not meant to be in full sunlight for long time.

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#72

Post by red_admiral »

Peanuts99 wrote: post #70
pdntspa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must everything look and be modern

The counter to this is the UK.Gov website. Very simple and basic, modern (maybe) but very accessible. Government websites should put accessibility over everything else.

They even have their own design system and CSS framework: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/get-started/

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#73

Post by dabluecaboose »

Rygian wrote: post #61
dabluecaboose wrote: post #15

Former GOES engineer here. At this point I'd almost be surprised if 19 didn't have something go wrong. We had issues on almost every other satellite. GOES-17 had the loop heat pipe anomaly(Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom...), GOES-15 (IIRC) had a micrometeorite strike, and GOES-13 had a fuel tank anomaly right before deorbit. GOES-16 and GOES-17 are on-orbit spares, so in the extremely unlikel…

From now on, every time I see the word "anomaly" I will assume it is an euphemism for "someone stepped on it".

"Anomaly" is one of those words that, in the space industry, can mean anything from "Our payload isn't behaving as well as we're expecting" to "Someone stepped on it" to "A rock hit it"

You can use it to describe literally anything that's off nominal. It's fantastic.

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#74

Post by tomnicholas1 »

runamuck wrote: post #57
tomnicholas1 wrote: post #42

Anyone interested in accessing GOES data at scale will find this interesting - I created a Zarr index over the 7 billion chunks of data in the GOES-16 archive. https://www.earthmover.io/blog/virtual-zarr

I used to work for NOAA. I think the scientists would flip out over this. Did you share it?

Yes! But if you want to share it with anyone else that would be great, since we're advocating for fairly radical changes within a big bureaucracy here, as I'm sure you will appreciate :)

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#75

Post by GTP »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #15

Former GOES engineer here. At this point I'd almost be surprised if 19 didn't have something go wrong. We had issues on almost every other satellite. GOES-17 had the loop heat pipe anomaly(Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom...), GOES-15 (IIRC) had a micrometeorite strike, and GOES-13 had a fuel tank anomaly right before deorbit. GOES-16 and GOES-17 are on-orbit spares, so in the extremely unlikel…

You expect cleanrooms to be extremely controlled environments where skilled technicians and engineers very carefully handle sensitive equipment... Then someone steps on a component :D

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#76

Post by bigfatkitten »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #73
Rygian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From now on, every time I see the word "anomaly" I will assume it is an euphemism for "someone stepped on it".

"Anomaly" is one of those words that, in the space industry, can mean anything from "Our payload isn't behaving as well as we're expecting" to "Someone stepped on it" to "A rock hit it" You can use it to describe literally anything that's off nominal. It's fantastic.

I learned recently that it can also mean "the spacecraft exploded on the launchpad in an enormous fireball."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-29/blue-origin-rocket-ex...

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#77

Post by dwroberts »

justusthane wrote: post #37
Uncle_Brumpus wrote: post #24

Interestingly, I noticed this in aproximately real time. I had been checking up on the visible-light geocolor composite images every hour or so to look at the massive plume of Canadian wildfire smoke that was turning the skies in the northeast dark orange yesterday. I haven't interacted with the GOES site or cared too much about the image output until the last 2 days, and the it immediately broke. Somewhat humorous t…

Is this what you're talking about? https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/conus_band.php?sat=G16...

This is a really cool page, never really thought about how much information you can squeeze out of just IR (recommend selecting the dust RGB and reading the PDF it links to explaining just how dust is tracked etc)

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#78

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #76
dabluecaboose wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anomaly" is one of those words that, in the space industry, can mean anything from "Our payload isn't behaving as well as we're expecting" to "Someone stepped on it" to "A rock hit it" You can use it to describe literally anything that's off nominal. It's fantastic.

I learned recently that it can also mean "the spacecraft exploded on the launchpad in an enormous fireball." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-29/blue-origin-rocket-ex...

That's already known as "rapid unscheduled disassembly" - and happens so-often in spaceflight that it's hardly anomalous at this point.

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#79

Post by krisoft »

GTP wrote: post #75
dabluecaboose wrote: post #15

Former GOES engineer here. At this point I'd almost be surprised if 19 didn't have something go wrong. We had issues on almost every other satellite. GOES-17 had the loop heat pipe anomaly(Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom...), GOES-15 (IIRC) had a micrometeorite strike, and GOES-13 had a fuel tank anomaly right before deorbit. GOES-16 and GOES-17 are on-orbit spares, so in the extremely unlikel…

You expect cleanrooms to be extremely controlled environments where skilled technicians and engineers very carefully handle sensitive equipment... Then someone steps on a component :D

Yeah. Stuff happens.

There is the famous case of dropping the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite on the ground. They were trying to turn it from vertical to horizontal and they forgot to bolt it to the adapter. Worse: multiple people signed the paperwork attesting that they verified that it was bolted down correctly. Pictures and details here: https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/

Or the famous “space aligator” event. There the original plan was to launch a manned space craft and an unmanned module to do a docking test between them. But the shroud protecting the target module didn’t deploy properly. If i remember it right because the man who usually assembled that part had to leave during assembly because his wife was giving birth. Someone put it together but appearantely not correctly. The half opened shroud reminded the astronauts to the jaws of an angry aligator hence the name. Pictures: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/gemini/gemini-ix/gemini-ix-cre...

Or to not only list American failures: this russian satelite launch failed spectacularly because the IMU was installed upside down. https://youtu.be/ycRVAcZC5R4?si=LRTS7sutKSp6HnGs This was designed to be impossible to do, but someone bent and forced the component to stay in place in the wrong orientation. Then someone else whose job was to check it just signed the paperwork without climbing into the location where he could have checked it.

I love these cases. Because it shows to me how even though the trappings of high-tech we are all fundamentally just occasionally lazy, occasionally distracted monkeys banging rocks together.

Re: Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

#80

Post by fhdkweig »

krisoft wrote: post #79
GTP wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect cleanrooms to be extremely controlled environments where skilled technicians and engineers very carefully handle sensitive equipment... Then someone steps on a component :D

Yeah. Stuff happens. There is the famous case of dropping the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite on the ground. They were trying to turn it from vertical to horizontal and they forgot to bolt it to the adapter. Worse: multiple people signed the paperwork attesting that they verified that it was bolted down correctly. Pictures and details here: https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/ Or the famous “space alig…

> multiple people signed the paperwork attesting that they verified that it was bolted down correctly.

In my experience, the more people who are assigned to do something, the more those people assume that someone else did it and slack off. Of course, I've never worked on something as difficult to fix as an orbital satellite.

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