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.
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…
There was also a test of the Apollo Launch Escape System wherein an unmanned CSM was launched on a Little Joe rocket with the plan being to manually trigger the LES at a specific point in the flight. The problem was that the roll accelerometer in the Little Joe had been installed backwards, so it quickly developed a substantial roll rate once it left the ground and the resulting centrifugal force acting on the innards of the SM turned them into rapidly escaping outards. This tore the SM skin apart and satisfied the automatic abort conditions for firing the LES. The LES operated as designed, the CM was pulled free of the SM, then went on to become stable and reach successful recovery conditions. The result was determined to be a successful test of the LES and the mission did not need to be reflown.
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…
In 1968, a team of Perkin-Elmer technicians were carrying the million dollar Copernicus space telescope mirror to the other side of the lab. They tripped over a piece of scrap lumber. Shaka, when the walls fell.
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…
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…
In 1968, a team of Perkin-Elmer technicians were carrying the million dollar Copernicus space telescope mirror to the other side of the lab. They tripped over a piece of scrap lumber. Shaka, when the walls fell.
That's a new one for me. Do you happen to have any pointers to more info? I found a few mentions, but nothing substantial.
In 1968, a team of Perkin-Elmer technicians were carrying the million dollar Copernicus space telescope mirror to the other side of the lab. They tripped over a piece of scrap lumber. Shaka, when the walls fell.
That's a new one for me. Do you happen to have any pointers to more info? I found a few mentions, but nothing substantial.
It was mentioned in http://www.terrydunkle.com/glass.php and in a Sky & Telescope magazine article from 1989 which explained why Perkin-Elmer began using very meticulous step by step procedure checklists after that. To prevent any major mistakes. Oh the irony.
The ones that look old are old. The USG has newer design systems that you'll see used on many of the websites that have been redesigned more recently: https://designsystem.digital.gov/ This admin gutted both NOAAs budget and workforce so a website redesign is probably low priority at the moment.
Sites like NASA's APOD have not changed by design. So many third parties have been built up around sites that any change [w|c]ould break so much for no effective gain. Same holds true when people ask why things like NOTAMs and even NOAA's alerts are formatted the way they are.
A new feed could be created and people gradually migrated to it.
These environmental satellites affect our day-to-day including the accuracy of weather forecasts. I believe the GOES program must receive more government funding because GOES-19 is a single point of failure and there have been numerous funding concerns. This is a national security issue because lack of resources to mitigate emergency weather events can lead to increased loss of life.
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…
The independent review team concluded the issue was from FOD in the pipe and recommended a redesign. Do you have a definite citation for someone stepped on it?