NOAA-17 technical report

I provided a technical report to you on the NOAA-17 AVHRR failure.
I will be updating this as the information becomes available. http://www.weatherscience.net/Reports/AVHRR_failure_report_10-16-2010.pdf

Thanks,
Steven Ross


09:20 UTC unusable APT image from NOAA-17 this morning

As most of you folks are aware by now on 15 Oct 2010 (10/287) at 15:23:21 UTC the AVHRR scan motor on NOAA-17 has stalled but not failed. The reason that it has not completely failed is because the motor is continuing to draw current but at a higher level. Engineers at NOAA speculate that the resistance caused by the break down in the lubrication with in the scan motor assembly is the main cause. On 28 Sep 2010 (10/271) at 20:11:19 UTC the NOAA-17 AVHRR Scan Motor performance notably changed (see Figure 1). Motor resistance increased resulting in the current saturating above 270 mA and the Temperature rising 2 C. Science Data became unusable due to the unstable rotational rates.

2 thoughts on “NOAA-17 technical report”

  1. Very well done! This is the only detailed info on the net that I could find.
    I remember back in 1978-79 the Noaa-5 spacecraft which had one of the first
    revolving mirror type radiometers also had a very similar problem and at the end froze up and the only signal heard was the 2400 Hz tone on 137.500 Mhz.
    Thanks,
    Fred

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